


A Change in the Weather

by red_river



Series: The Other Guardian [4]
Category: Supernatural
Genre: Friendship, Gen, Humor, M/M, Pre-Slash, Team Bonding
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-07-25
Updated: 2013-08-07
Packaged: 2017-12-21 07:58:14
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 29,501
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/897847
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/red_river/pseuds/red_river
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>On the trail of an unlikely hunt, Sam and Dean hole up at a high-class lodge in the Colorado Rockies. Inviting Cas to tag along might not have been the best decision Dean ever made half sober. Together, the three confront menus, pool cues, shower curtains, and a short, angry woman who just might be the death of them all. Sam and Cas centric, friendship/pre-slash.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Luxury Accommodations

**Author's Note:**

> This is the next story in a mild AU/canon divergence series called The Other Guardian 'verse. In brief: after Dean is raised from Hell by Castiel, an entire year passes before the Lilith rises and the seals start to break. During that time, Castiel is assigned to watch over the Winchesters, and finds himself growing closer and closer to Sam.
> 
> This story follows "Stepping Stones," but is completely standalone - not necessary to read any other stories first. Sam and Cas centric, but more in the style of "Looking for Love in Las Vegas," Dean often joins in.

**A Change in the Weather**

The main lodge of the Devil's Thumb Ranch resort, nestled between the slopes of the Rocky Mountains and plains of sparkling snow, was a sprawling structure of huge timber logs and wrought iron accents, picture perfect from its wooden turrets to the sidewalks lit by blown-glass lanterns. Sam's first thought was that if a log cabin made a wish and its fairy godmother turned it into a log palace, it might look like this. Dean's first thought, coming out of his mouth as usual as he raised his eyebrows and jerked his head at the lodge beyond the Impala's foggy windows, was, "Wow—swanky, Sammy."

The adjunct bunkhouse, where they were actually staying, didn't get quite the same enthusiasm.

"You've gotta be kidding me."

Dean put the car in park and Sam rubbed his sleeve against his window, clearing the glass so he could peer out at the bunkhouse. It wasn't a bad-looking structure overall, a two-story building constructed of the same massive logs as the lodge and definitely in better repair than a lot of the places they'd stayed—but Dean seemed to be in a bitching mood, judging by the serious melodrama in the air as he slapped the steering wheel and turned to glare at Sam.

"What the hell, Sam? This is the last time I let you book the room—swear to God."

Sam just rolled his eyes and pulled his gloves on, wishing there were enough room in the front seat of the Impala to zip his parka up the rest of the way. "Dude, it's not that bad. We've got our own bathroom. Two beds. And we still get to use the lodge pool and everything, so…"

"Not that bad?" Dean echoed. "Sam, there were girls in bathrobes in that lodge. _Walking across the lobby_. There was a bar right in the restaurant. But instead, you booked us in the hobo shack ten miles down the road where you probably can't even drink the tap water."

"We're only two miles down the road," Sam told him, earning a sarcastic little head bobble from his ultra-mature older brother. "And the reason I booked us in the bunkhouse is because last time I got a room in a lodge like that one, you chewed me out for weeks about how much it cost. The bunkhouse is, like, $300 cheaper. We're only staying for one night anyway."

"Bathrobes, Sam," Dean shot back, as if that explained everything. Then he stepped out of the car and shut his door with a snap, his boots crunching on the snow-covered gravel as he marched back to the trunk. Sam made a face at the ceiling before following him into the cold.

The week had started out in typical Winchester fashion. Dean had caught the scent of a possible case in the mountains west of Denver; Sam had been skeptical about this one—more than skeptical, honestly—but since Dean was seriously jonesing for a hunt, they'd packed the car and headed out anyway, leaving the comfortable warmth of Bobby's house for the snowy Rockies. Dean had been all for camping out, but Sam knew enough about Colorado in March to call ahead and get a room at the only lodge even close to their destination. The week took a left turn when the case fell _out_ of their laps for a change, the rumors Dean had been chasing debunked before they even arrived—but since the room was already paid for, and they didn't have another job lined up, Sam had convinced Dean to let them stay anyway.

Sam threw his bags over his shoulder and looked up at the row of icicles lining the gutter, and then shook his head as Dean pushed him toward the building. It was only one night, after all—it couldn't be that bad, even if Dean spent the whole time complaining.

Sam's own doubts about the bunkhouse started when he had to duck not just his head but his shoulders to get in the front door. He had to do the same thing to get from the entryway to the first-floor hallway, and he almost took himself out on the huge timber rafter hanging right at forehead level at the bottom of the stairs. The bunkhouse had definitely been built for people of more average height. Dean kept up a running commentary about Sam's choice in lodging, from the stairs that creaked like they were about to collapse and send both Winchesters down a level or two, to the weirdly dim common room at the top of the stairs that had serial killer slasher movie written all over it. Sam might have chimed in with a few concerns of his own if Dean had ever paused for breath.

Dean led the way down the very narrow corridor to their room, which came to a point like an arrowhead at the far end, the last two doors angled toward each other so sharply that Sam figured it was necessity and not courtesy that made the doors swing inward. Naturally their room was one of those. He had to duck partway just to get down the hall, and with the bags over his shoulders he was easily brushing both walls—which made it twice as awkward when the door across from theirs swung open just as Dean pulled to a halt in front of their room, scratching his ear with one absent finger.

"What was the door code?"

Sam was distracted from his brother's question by the person in the doorway of the neighboring room—a short, blond woman who didn't even come up to Sam's shoulder and stared at him and his muddle of bags with narrowed eyes, like she'd hit a Road Closed sign and was trying to decide if her Land Rover was up for off-roading it. After a moment she seemed to come to the same conclusion as Sam, namely that there was no way she was getting down the hall without Sam getting out of it first; Sam sent her an apologetic smile, but the woman just crossed her arms, her eyes fixed on him as Dean turned around and punched him in the shoulder.

"Dude! Door code."

"Uh…" Sam blinked, trying to get his head back in a helpful space. "It's the last four digits of the cell phone."

"What cell phone?"

"Mine," Sam told him.

Dean just rolled his eyes. "Which one?" he repeated.

Sam wanted nothing more than to get them in the room as quickly as possible, especially because the short, angry woman had started honest-to-God tapping her foot, but his mind was a jumble, struggling to remember which cell phone he'd used when he made the reservation and realizing that he'd never tried to call up just part of his phone number before. He rubbed a hand across his forehead as if that would dispel the mental wall. "Uh, it's… I think it's the one—"

The angry woman had had enough. "Excuse me," she snapped, managing to make the pleasantry sound like an insult. Then she set her shoulders and barreled into the hallway like a linebacker; Sam threw himself back against the wall to get out of the way but still ended up taking an elbow in the stomach, maybe not accidentally. With the weight of the bags on his shoulders it took him a minute to get his balance back, and when he did he looked up to find Dean grinning at him—not a very nice grin, but a very Dean grin all the same.

"You know those videos of tiny Chihuahuas chasing off, like, massive St. Bernards, and how everybody laughs because those big dogs look so stupid running from something you could fit in a purse?" Sam tipped his head to the side, unimpressed, but Dean cocked his eyebrows anyway. "You're the St. Bernard."

Sam rolled his eyes. "2-3-6-8. Open the door."

The last thing Sam saw as he banged his way through the narrow doorway after Dean was a man stepping out into the hall from the angry woman's room and glancing from side to side, obviously bewildered by her absence. Sam was tempted to give him a hint, but deciding it was more important not to have a repeat of what Dean would no doubt refer to forever as the "Chihuahua incident," he leveraged himself into his own room and dropped the bags, giving the man an apologetic smile just before the door shut between them.

"Well, it's official," Dean told him. "You are a crap travel agent."

Sam supposed he should have figured that the room would be small. The ceiling was tall enough for him to stand up straight, which was a plus, but it sloped down on the sides to about elbow level at its lowest point. The beds were short—Sam's feet were definitely going to hang over the end if he stretched out—and the closet was just a tiny nook in one corner that Sam was definitely never going to fit into. He glanced into the bathroom to find that the toilet and the sink were abysmally close together, and wondered briefly if he was going to be able to use the former without banging his knees on the latter.

"Oh, sure, it's just one night," Dean griped as he kicked his shoes off, flopping backward onto the bed closest to the window. "You suck, Sammy. There's no TV in here, no minibar—no mini fridge, even. What kind of hotel doesn't have a TV? And I don't like the idea of staying somewhere where I can tell the walls used to be trees."

Sam finished prying off his snow boots in the corner by the dresser and looked up at the log walls, knobby and uneven with yellow caulk jammed between the joints—then he wondered if the whole thing had been a setup, because in his moment of distraction he stood up too straight for the slanting corner of the room and slammed his head into one of the thick rafter poles, taking a knot right in the back of the skull. Sam bent in half and clutched his head, cursing under his breath; from the bed, Dean snorted like a boar.

"Jesus, Sam. Are you the right size for anything?"

Sam glared at his brother but chose to ignore him, just giving a long-suffering sigh as he stepped into the bathroom to wash the slush of melting snow from his hands. He wondered briefly if the bunkhouse was cursed when he turned on the faucet and the serious water pressure splattered cold water all over him, with an especially high concentration right about groin level, and then it got him again when he tried to leave the bathroom too fast and smacked his forehead into the doorframe. Dean glanced back at Sam from his position at the window.

"Got a little fly problem over here," Dean told him, waving a pamphlet for the ranch's day spa. He whacked the folded paper hard against the glass and then wrinkled his nose, tossing it straight into the trash can. "Huh. That one died bloody." Then Dean did a double-take in Sam's direction, fixated on his brother's wet jeans. "Dude—did you pee yourself?"

Sam rested his aching head against the crosspiece and wondered if one night here was going to be too much for them after all.

.x.

The Winchesters had moved again. Castiel was used to that by now—they were oddly transient for humans, who were largely a homing species. Still, finding them was never a challenge; Castiel followed his sense of them to a small room in an old wooden building, and then folded his wings, careful not to land in the bathroom. When he manifested in physical form, he found that his back and neck were strangely bent, as if the corner of the room in which he'd appeared wasn't tall enough to accommodate his vessel. From that position he evaluated his charges: Dean, who stood with his back to the angel and the dresser he'd alighted next to, restless arms crossed; and Sam, seated on the edge of one bed rifling through a pile of wrinkled clothes. Shirts and pants of various colors were strewn across most of the other bed as well.

The Winchesters were also bickering. Castiel had gotten used to that perhaps even faster than their constant relocating.

"Dean, I'm serious. We're not doing laundry in the same load anymore, so stop shoving your dirty clothes in my duffel bag, okay?" Sam sifted through the clothes in front of him and threw a pair of jeans onto the second bed—a little too forcefully, possibly, as they slid off the mattress and disappeared. "If you're not going to read the instructions on the tags, fine—but screw up your own clothes from now on."

Dean rolled his eyes. "Oh, I'm sorry, _Samantha_ —did some of your delicates get messed up taking a spin in the washing machine with normal clothes?"

Sam scoffed and flung a green t-shirt after the pair of jeans. "No, Dean," he shot back. "You threw my flannels in the dryer on high with your boxers, and they all shrunk. Now I can't wear any of them."

Dean reached down to grab a sweatshirt from the floor and hurled it at his brother's head. "Well, maybe you wouldn't have this problem if you weren't a giant gargantuan freak."

Sam tipped back until he was staring at the ceiling; he was silent for a moment, as if gathering strength, and then slowly shook his head, crumpling the sweatshirt into a ball between his large hands. "Yeah—you're right, Dean. I'm gargantuan. But you know what? Until _you_ got hold of them, my flannels were, too—that's why I bought them. I basically have no shirts anymore."

Dean threw his hands up at his sides. "You need a shirt, princess? Here, let me help you." With an angry bob of his head Dean whirled around, hand outstretched as if reaching for the dresser—but when he found himself an inch from Castiel and his hand stopped by the angel's tan trench coat, he leapt back, jerking away as if the coat had burned him. "Holy Aunt Jemima!" Dean spit out in a rush, pressing his palm over his chest as if to calm the heartbeat that was pounding in his neck. "Cas! Are you trying to give me a coronary?"

Castiel narrowed his eyes, pondering the slang. "No," he decided. Then his gaze shifted to Sam, who had risen from the bed and was moving slowly toward the angel with wide eyes, rubbing his hands on his jeans.

"Cas. Hey. Um… sorry for… all of that. I guess we didn't see you when you came in."

Dean took another step backward and smacked his brother in the shoulder. "That is not the problem, dude," he growled, seemingly no longer irritated with Sam, but now irritated with Castiel instead. Dean was generally irritated with at least one person. "The problem is that he doesn't _come in_. He just pops up behind me and then stands there like American Psycho waiting to go apeshit on my ass." Sam rolled his eyes as Dean rounded on Castiel again, his features pinched with annoyance. "Seriously, Cas. Could you at least say something when you drop in, instead of ambushing me like some holy Spanish Inquisition?"

Castiel tried to tip his head to one side, though the angle of the roof pressing on his neck made the motion difficult. "What would you like me to say?" he asked.

Dean threw his arms out at his sides. "How about a good old-fashioned 'hello'?"

Humans were particular about their courtesies, Castiel had decided after weeks of assignment to the Winchesters. Dean was an especially confusing individual, liable to ignore pleasantries himself even though he seemed keen on Castiel following them. But this request didn't strike the angel as an unusually difficult one to honor, and since Sam was not objecting, probably not a selfish one on Dean's part, either. The angel adjusted his head against the beams of the ceiling.

"Hello, Dean," he said. Then he glanced at the second waiting figure. "Hello, Sam."

Sam sent him an encouraging smile. "Hey, Castiel."

Dean just rolled his eyes. "Great. Now would you get out of that corner? You look like a broken puppet standing there with your neck cranked. It's even creepier than normal."

Castiel did as he was asked, straightening back to his usual height as he stepped out into the center of the room. His gaze returned to Sam, who nodded at him once or twice, though Castiel was not sure what that meant—then the younger Winchester seemed to become aware of the state of the room, and he bent to scoop up an armful of clothes, clutching them to his chest as he moved back to his bed.

"So, uh, is this just a check-in, Cas?" Sam asked. He threw his mismatched bundle of clothing down to join the rest of it on the bed and then pulled the comforter over the whole pile. Dean watched his brother and shook his head slowly.

"Christ, Sammy. He doesn't care."

Castiel did care about Dean's thoughtless blasphemy—he was unsure what Sam was doing with his clothes, so it was difficult to know if he cared about that or not. But as Sam was already giving his brother a sharp look, ostensibly for his careless tongue, Castiel chose to focus on the younger Winchester.

"Are you on a case, Sam?" he asked.

"No," Sam told him at the same moment that Dean answered, "Yes." The two shared a look, Sam's lips turned down in an exasperated frown, and then Dean raked a hand back through his hair, his head bobbing from side to side. "Not exactly," he amended.

Sam sunk back onto the corner of the bed and folded his arms. "Not at all," he pushed, "because there's no such thing as Bigfoot, Dean. Everybody knows that."

Dean gave a heavy shrug, tugging on his earlobe with one loose hand. "I know," he said, though his voice sounded strangely high to Castiel. "But somebody saw something. It could have been our kind of thing… skinwalker, wendigo—whatever. Just 'cause some civvies call in a Bigfoot sighting to CNN doesn't mean we can ignore it."

Sam pressed the heels of his hands into his eyes. "Man, why is this your white whale?" he muttered, dropping his hands to give his brother a flat look. "It was a bear, Dean. It's always a bear. And if it's not a bear, it's a hoax. How many times are we going to have to chase these rumors before you accept that there is no Sasquatch?"

Dean raised his eyebrows. "I don't know, Sam; I sort of feel like I'm looking at Sasquatch right now."

Sam took a breath and held it, squeezing his eyes shut for a long moment. When he opened them again, he turned deliberately to Castiel instead, sighing as his expression smoothed back to neutrality. "Yeah. Anyway, bottom line—the case we were here for fell through, and unless we decide that bear has some friends who need rounding up…" Sam paused and threw a glance at his brother, who was opening and closing his hand like a talking mouth; the younger hunter rolled his eyes and sent Castiel an apologetic smile. "We're probably not going to stumble onto a case before we head out tomorrow."

Castiel struggled at times with the concept of sarcasm; he had learned to recognize when Dean was being facetious for the sake of insulting him, but he had more difficulty with Sam, already a complicated individual. He doubted Sam genuinely planned to go bear hunting, but the Winchesters could be impulsive at times, especially when Dean became restless. Castiel glanced at the older hunter, ignoring their conversation now as he noisily unwrapped the foil from a candy bar, and nodded shortly.

"I will… stay close," the angel said, catching Sam's eyes once more.

Sam opened his mouth as if to respond, but Dean cut him off, stepping between the two of them and shaking his candy bar at Castiel. "The hell you will," Dean said, though the words were somewhat mangled around his mouthful of chocolate and crunching peanuts. Castiel felt himself frown as he caught a glimpse of the churning mastication going on in Dean's mouth. "I've had it up to here with the angel stalker crap. If you're gonna be hanging around, you hang around with us—so we can see you, you get me? No more of that Invisible Man shit you've been pulling."

Castiel felt his brows draw together. "I don't understand."

Dean rolled his eyes at the ceiling, tucking another hunk of the chocolate bar into his cheek. "All right. Let me break this down for you, Cas. You've got two paths in front of you right now: friend or stalker. Friends hang out and have good times—they laugh and drink and if they're really smashed, maybe do some karaoke or pull donuts in the parking lot." Castiel glanced at Sam to see if the younger hunter planned to explain any of those terms, but Dean wasn't nearly finished, and he shook the rest of his candy bar in Castiel's face to get his attention. "Stalkers sneak around behind people's backs and take creepy pictures of them, and in the end somebody usually gets their head cut off by a buzz saw." Dean returned Castiel's stare as he chewed pointedly on the last of his bar. "So which do you want to be, Cas? A friend or a stalker?"

Castiel had often wondered at this tendency of humans—to phrase something in the form of a question when the desired answer was obvious, and the contrast between the two often ridiculous. He didn't understand what purpose the question served in this context. All the same, as Dean gave a hard swallow and began rolling his chocolate-covered index finger over and over impatiently, Castiel chose to oblige him.

"A friend," he said, glancing momentarily at Sam, who now stood at the edge of the bed with his hands tucked against his side.

Dean gave a hard nod. "Good," he said, licking the last of the chocolate from his lips. "Because stalkers get buzz-sawed. I don't care who they work for." Then Dean shrugged, all of the antagonism draining from his face as he reached out to slap his brother's shoulder. "Well, that's enough of that touchy-feely crap. I gotta hit the head. When I get out, the three of us'll go get some grub. I'm fucking starving."

Castiel wondered what "hit the head" meant, and what Dean meant to hit his head on, but before he could ask the older hunter disappeared into the bathroom and slammed the door behind him, rattling the coat hooks that stood out from the blonde wood.

"Just don't hit the sink," Sam called after him. There was an indistinguishable shout from behind the door that sounded a little like a curse, and Sam shook his head, laughing under his breath. Then he looked up and caught Castiel's eyes again, and the laugh turned into a smile, Sam's lips quirking upward at the corners. "Anyway," he started, grabbing his heavy coat from the floor and sliding one arm into the blue sleeve, "just come if you want to, Cas. You don't have to listen to Dean, but… it'd be nice."

Castiel returned the young man's smile with a slight frown. "You know I do not require food, Sam."

Sam shrugged the rest of the way into his coat. "How about company?" he asked.

Castiel considered that for a long moment. Then he tipped his head to one side. "Company could be acceptable," he replied, wondering why his words put a crooked little bend into the curve of Sam's lips. "I will… hang around," he finished.

Sam's face seemed lighter when he smiled.


	2. Fine Dining

Sam had been raised on diner food. When he was growing up, the two most important things about any meal had been that it was cheap and that they could get it at four a.m. when they finally rolled into a town, neither of which really led them to upscale restaurants. While he was at Stanford, he'd been to a few nicer places with friends—but since they were all poor college students and he was flat-out broke, it had been pretty rare even then. Bottom line, Sam was sort of unfamiliar with places where you had to wait to be seated, let alone make a reservation.

He hadn't done that. So the wait for the table had been a little… long.

Heck's was a nicer restaurant than Sam had been led to believe by the lady at the front desk calling it their "casual dining" option. While they'd waited less than patiently for their table and Dean had griped endlessly about everything from Sam's trip planning skills to the thousand-yard stare Castiel was giving the specials board, Sam had taken in the heavy dark wood tables, the chandeliers with fake candles overhead and the huge stone fireplace in the center of the room, the flames glittering on the stemmed water glasses on every table. It was a little ritzy for their merry band, really. Still, when they'd finally been seated and the waiter had left them with the menus, Sam looked out the picture window at the mountains covered in snow and darkness and decided it could be nice to eat at places like this, just every once in a while.

"Hey, Captain Columbo—that's for looking at, not for getting ideas about."

Sam looked up at his brother's gripe to find that Castiel, sitting to his left, was leafing slowly through the heavy leather-bound menu, his eyes scrolling down every page as if memorizing it. He looked up at Dean's comment, expression blank, and then glanced at Sam before his attention returned to the menu. Sam shifted in his chair.

"Do you need me to explain anything to you, Cas?" he asked. He always hesitated over questions like that, because Castiel wasn't stupid and it was impossible to forget that he knew the name of every star and a million other things Sam didn't even have room for in his head. But it didn't seem like Cas had done a lot of fine dining, and even Sam didn't know what wild mushroom arancini was.

Dean snapped his menu shut and slapped it against Sam's shoulder. "Stop it, Sam," he growled, his warning finger hovering an inch from his brother's nose. "We're not buying him anything."

Sam glanced at Castiel and then back at his brother. "Dean—" he started.

Dean shook his head and pulled his menu open, flapping the pages in his face like Sam was severely nearsighted, or like Dean was a complete idiot. "Have you looked at these prices?" Dean demanded, fortunately only loud enough that the next two tables could probably hear him. "Fifteen bucks for a hamburger? I'm not sure yet I'm gonna let _you_ order anything, Sam." Sam rolled his eyes as Dean returned his menu to the table in front of him, taking a swig from his water glass and swallowing a few ice cubes at the same time. "What kind of uppity joint did you bring me to anyway, huh? Three pages of wine and not a single beer?"

"It's a nice place," Sam said. He crooked one hand and lowered it toward the table, willing his brother to bring the volume down at least a decibel or two. Dean made a sound of disgust in the back of his throat.

"No, it's pricey. So stop telling Cas he can have whatever he wants—'cause he can't."

Sam glanced at the angel beside him. Castiel still looked completely impassive; sometimes Cas reminded Sam of a spectator at the world Ping-Pong championships, watching him and Dean paddle it out but never getting involved in the match, even when he was sort of the ball. He couldn't tell if Castiel even wanted anything, but for some reason Sam found himself pushing the argument along, turning back to his brother with his eyebrows raised hopefully.

"Dean, come on. It's the first time he's ever been to a restaurant."

"Okay, first of all, that's just not true," Dean told him, basic Winchester instincts forcing him to pause in his tirade as the waiter appeared with their complimentary bread. Dean had a roll in his hand almost before the basket hit the table, and he took a huge bite of it, talking around his full mouth in charming Dean fashion. "The Waffle King is a perfectly respectable restaurant. And secondly, who cares, Sam? It's not like he's gonna go back upstairs and complain to the other angels about how we didn't show him a good time. Are ya?" Dean asked, his focus and the dinner roll he was using to do his menacing swinging toward Castiel. Castiel said nothing, though he did squint pretty hard at the roll. Dean pulled it back and took another massive bite. "That's what I thought. You'll get nothing and like it."

Sam wished he had a better response to his brother's rant than rolling his eyes—but Dean was paying, after all. He ignored Dean's victorious grin and turned back to Castiel. "You can share with me," he told the angel, interrupting Castiel's staring match with the last of Dean's roll. Castiel sent him a blank look.

Dean looked like he had more to say about that, but fortunately they were interrupted by the return of the waiter, who seemed to be working overtime to get their orders into the kitchen as fast as possible, at least. While Dean ordered a bacon cheeseburger, Sam scanned the menu in a rush, trying to pick something the angel on his left might like—he'd been planning to order a salad, but somehow it was hard to picture Castiel taking a bite of tomatoes and bleu cheese dressing. Or was a salad as close as it got to something pure enough for an angel? About the time the waiter turned to him, Sam was struck with a sudden curiosity whether angels were vegetarians, the ones who ate at all; in the end he stumbled through an order for the vegetable primavera with angel hair pasta, which only struck him as really stupid and ironic about the time Dean sent him a _seriously?_ look over the basket of rolls. Castiel didn't say anything about it, though, so Sam let it go, managing something like a smile as he handed his menu back to the waiter. The man glanced once at Castiel, but the angel wasn't even looking at him, instead staring out across the sea of tables like he was watching the molecules move, and the waiter left without even asking for an order. Once he was gone, Dean leaned across the table and smacked Sam's arm with the back of his hand.

"This had better be the best damn burger I've ever had, Sam," he warned, jerking his head up once in the universal _I'm watching you_ signal. Sam gave him a noncommittal shrug. Dean slumped against the back of his chair and shook his head. "Honestly. Who would come here to have a good time? No beer, no bar nuts, no hot chicks—"

"Excuse me."

Sam and Dean looked up simultaneously to find a woman standing at the corner of their table. She was dressed in a caramel sweater that looked like cashmere, with her long, curly blond hair looped up in a high bun, and from the way Dean's ears pricked up like a dog's at the sight of her, she was at least a six on Sam's brother's list, if not a seven. Dean relaxed into the curve of the chair and raised his eyebrows.

"Oh, you are definitely excused," he said.

The woman gave a fleeting simper, like she was very used to being hit on and far from impressed. "Yeah. I just came over to ask your friend to stop staring at our table—it's really rude and he's making my grandmother uncomfortable."

Sam swung his head around to find Castiel with his face set in its usual blank mask, his gaze aimed at the gap between the Winchesters, and then followed the direction of his stare to the back of a graying head, a few family members watching their table over the grandmother's shoulders. Dean made about the same motion and then slammed the flat of his hand down on the table, startling Sam and the woman in the sweater way more than their resident angel, if Cas's lack of reaction was anything to go by; Sam jumped in his chair and the woman took a hasty step back, but Castiel just turned his sharp blue eyes on Dean, waiting for an explanation as the woman scurried away.

"Hell no, Cas," Dean said, slapping the table again and making their silverware rattle. "Hell no. Whatever place it is you go when you turn off your brain, you come back here and you stay here. I'm not sitting at dinner with an angel stuck in neutral, you got me?"

Castiel narrowed his eyes slightly, looking less confused than mildly annoyed, though Sam really wouldn't claim to be an expert on heavenly facial expressions. "I was listening to the angels," he said.

"I don't care if you were radioing the mothership to call off the invasion," Dean shot back. "You can't just stare at people like that, Cas. It makes you look like a freak. You can look at me, or you can look at Sam. That's it. Capice?"

Castiel tipped his head slightly and stared at Dean without blinking. He reminded Sam of someone examining an insect in a jar, maybe trying to decide whether to poke air holes in the metal lid. But at last his neck turned until his gaze locked on Sam, and Sam gave him a little smile. Dean grunted and flopped back in his chair.

"I swear, Sammy, if this burger isn't the thickest, juiciest half pound of beef I've ever tasted, you're driving me to McDonald's for a midnight fast food run."

Sam's smile slipped away as he blinked at his brother. "Why do you want me to drive?"

Dean rolled his eyes. "Because I plan to be smashed beyond all get-out by then."

Sam hated the idea of skating down the icy mountain roads at midnight in the Impala, with a heater that barely worked well enough to keep his fingers from going numb, for a sack full of greasy burgers that he had to choke down like whole sticks of butter. All the same, when Dean's plate landed on the table with a burger that would have fit within the actual palm of his hand, Sam smothered his wince and asked, "So, did you want to pencil that in for midnight or 11:30?"

Dean just shot him a revolted look and shoved a handful of garlic fries in his mouth.

Sam's own entrée was good, if spicier than he was used to. He took a few bites of the pasta and heirloom tomatoes in basil sauce and then had to reach for his water, choking on the extra spice, and as he lifted the glass to his lips he caught the stark blue eyes of the angel who had been scrutinizing him in silence. Sam was so used to eating with Dean that he had sort of forgotten, for a minute, that Cas was there, too; and thanks to his brother's faulty instructions, Castiel was apparently staring at him now, that unwavering gaze pinned on his face. Now that he'd noticed, Sam found it kind of hard to eat. He curled a few noodles around his fork and brought it up to his mouth, but then paused, remembering what he'd said before the waiter took their orders.

"Cas, do you want a bite?"

Castiel's eyes flickered to the fork and then back up to Sam's. Sam thought that was probably the vaguest response he'd ever gotten—and that after a lifetime of living with Dean and definitely never talking about anything that mattered—but all the same he pushed on, holding the fork out to the angel and sending him a little smile.

"Try it. It's good."

Castiel considered the fork for a beat. Then he leaned forward and opened his mouth, taking the bite right out of Sam's hand.

Dean gagged around a mouthful of burger. "Damn it, Sam," he garbled, crumbs spitting from his lips. "You taught him that." Dean waved a garlic fry sick with ketchup in Sam's direction. "Don't let him get away with that. He'll never learn."

Sam hadn't really intended to feed Castiel off of his fork, a mistake first made at the Waffle King that had apparently become standard operating procedure in Cas's mind. All the same, he couldn't help rolling his eyes at his brother as he speared a yellow tomato and slid it off onto his bread plate, following it with a modest pile of noodles. "He's not a dog, Dean," Sam said. Then he pushed the small plate in front of Castiel, nodding at the untouched silverware beside his right hand. "Here you go, Cas."

"He sure follows you around like a lost puppy," Dean mumbled into his burger. But Sam decided to ignore it, because Castiel finished chewing his first bite and said "thank you" at the same moment, and Sam was a lot more invested in encouraging him than continuing his never-ending bickerfest with Dean. He mouthed "you're welcome" back to the angel and then dug into his pasta again.

Castiel picked up his fork, cradling it correctly between his thumb and fingers, but for a long moment he did nothing else with it. Sam hooked his own fork through a few noodles and then stabbed a piece of red pepper, and rolled the noodles carefully around the tines until he had a bite ready. He put the fork in his mouth as if it was nothing, but Sam couldn't deny how gratified he felt to see Castiel copying him out of the corner of his eye, each turn of his fork studied and precise. Sam was sitting in a fancy restaurant teaching an angel how to twirl pasta around a fork, and for a second he allowed that thought to bowl him over, take him to the mat and make his head spin. But it wasn't just an angel he was teaching, it was Cas—and that more than anything put a smile on his face, a smile he turned to the cascade of white flakes coming down beyond the huge picture windows.

"It's snowing," Sam told the table, taking another sip of water before the sauce overwhelmed him. "That's so pretty."

Dean made a face at him and mouthed _pretty_ around the ends of four garlic fries sticking out of his maw, but Castiel turned to follow his gaze to the window. He sort of looked blank as usual, but Sam got the feeling there was something like emotion behind the angel's expression, even if he couldn't place why he thought that—maybe it was the tiny creases around his eyes that might have been the start of a smile that didn't happen, or the relaxed line of his jaw even though his lips were pressed together. It made Sam wonder if Cas actually enjoyed looking at the snow, if it maybe reminded him of something beautiful and incredible that Sam couldn't even imagine. There was a fire pit on the open deck beyond the window, figures huddled around it under the snowflakes, and as he watched, one of them, obviously a child, peeled off from the group and slid into a snow bank at the edge of the patio, a taller shape that must have been a parent rushing after those flailing arms. Sam laughed and turned back to face his brother.

"Hey, Dean. Remember those really awful snowmen we used to make in the motel parking lots?"

Dean gave Sam a measuring glance, like he was deciding which way to take his response—but then he snorted and tossed his head, licking the last of the burger from his fingers. "What are you talking about, Sam? My snowmen were fucking perfect. Yours were the fugly ones."

Sam tipped his head as a laugh slipped past his lips. "Perfect. Even the one with no head."

Dean's eyebrows drew together in annoyance. "It had a head until that the guy clearing the sidewalk swiped it with his shovel. Man, I should've beat his ass."

Sam couldn't help rolling his eyes. "You were like, nine."

His brother shrugged. "Still."

Sam found he was laughing again, a laugh that started all the way in his stomach instead of just the back of his throat, a laugh that made him take a deep breath at the end instead of one that caught in his lungs. It felt like it had been a long time since he'd laughed like that. The fireplace crackled at the center of the room, sending pulsing waves of heat out across the tables, and Sam thought he couldn't get any warmer until Castiel turned to him and set his fork down, licking the last of the basil sauce from his lower lip.

"Did you also make snow angels?" he asked.

The phrasing was awkward, and so was Castiel's expression, sort of pinched as the unfamiliar words rolled from his tongue. But when he caught Sam's gaze and held it, Sam couldn't help the smile that stretched across his face, recalling the first moment of warmth between them in a tiny cabin in the snow, and putting his foot in his mouth. It didn't taste so bad anymore, knowing Cas had remembered it.

Dean apparently wasn't having the same feelings.

"Wow—little self-centered there, Cas," Sam's brother declared, pressing his fingertips to the plate to get the last crumbs of fries. He sucked them into his mouth with a squelching sound that had made Sam's skin crawl since basically forever; but then he shrugged, wiping his hands against his jeans instead of the napkin in his lap. "But snow angels—yeah, Sam was really into those." A jackal grin stretched across his lips, and he leaned over to elbow Sam in the side. "He used to lay there in the snow and cry until I came over and lifted him out of the center, 'cause he didn't want to break them. Practically bawled his eyes out."

Sam ducked his head a little at that, because of course _that_ was the part his brother chose to share—but Dean just stared across the table at Castiel, mashing a last pepper onto his fork, and shook his head before snagging another roll from the depleted basket.

"Course first real one he meets, he breaks it anyway," Dean muttered. Sam followed his gaze to Castiel and watched as the angel surveyed his empty plate and then looked up at Sam, and then down at the pasta lingering on Sam's plate, and up once more. Sam pressed his lips together to hold back a smile.

"Do you want another bite, Cas?" he asked, already picking up his fork from the table.

"Ugh. I can't sit here and watch this lovefest," Dean complained. He stretched both arms over his head and then pushed up from his chair, hooking one ankle around the leg and edging it back under the table as his eyes drifted over to the bar at one end of the restaurant. "I'm gonna go get a beer—or a whiskey. Fuck it, anything harder than water's okay with me at this point." Then Dean whistled low under his breath, and Sam paused in winding the pasta around his fork to look up at his brother, waggling an obnoxious thumb over his shoulder at the woman in the caramel-colored sweater. "And look at that. Blond Bombshell's getting a refill, too. Maybe she won't be so cranky now that some creep in a trench coat isn't staring at her grandmother."

"Will you grab me a Coke?" Sam asked, feeling the twitch of spice in the back of his throat.

Dean raised an eyebrow. "You assume I'm coming back to this table."

Sam glanced at the woman at the bar one more time, one hand seated on her hip and the other brushing back the bangs of her expensive perm. Then he shrugged. "Yeah."

Dean scoffed. "Watch and learn, Sammy," he said, and then as an afterthought pointed at Castiel, too, clicking the hammer on his finger gun. "And you too, you awkward jackass. Who knows? Maybe someday you'll want to put the moves on someone."

Sam just shook his head as his brother walked away. Then he turned back to Castiel, noticing the crinkle of confusion bothering the angel's forehead. Castiel locked eyes with Sam and tipped his head to one side. "What does it mean, to 'put moves on'?" he asked.

Sam rolled his eyes. "It means he's going to make a fool of himself. But on the upside, he'll be back with my Coke pretty fast."

He finished twirling the pasta around his fork and capped it with half of a cherry tomato, and then lifted it from the plate, holding the implement carefully between them. Castiel reached out for it, his fingers hesitating just beyond Sam's, and Sam cast a glance over his shoulder to make sure Dean's eyes were locked on the girl he didn't have a chance with. Then he smiled and pushed the tip of the fork all the way up to Cas's lips—because what the hell, and because it was fun, and Cas wouldn't put up with being fed forever. It wasn't like Dean could give him any more hell for it than he already was.

.x.

It turned out Blondie was still in a sour mood. Dean decided he didn't really care. Admittedly, he was pretty desperate, being stranded at this fancy-pants ski lodge with only his brother and an angel who was about as much fun as a tax audit for company. Still, the woman wasn't his type. Dean didn't really like bossy chicks—at least not out of the sack.

Dean leaned back against the bar and took a swig of his beer, some local microbrew with a bicycle on the label. It was pretty good—not eight dollars for one bottle good, but good enough that he was going to pay for another one, since it was all he could get. He'd paid their dinner check at the bar, too, and sort of wished the tip could go to the guy behind the bar with the really dope porn-star moustache instead of that fucker who'd brought him a two-bite hamburger. For that price, the waiter should have brought two of them, at least.

The memory of that disgustingly tiny burger pulled the meal back into Dean's mind, and he glanced over at the two chairs still occupied at their table, rolling a sip of beer around his mouth and letting it foam in his teeth. Sam and Cas were talking about something, maybe—Sam was talking, anyway, and Cas was still staring at him with a fixation that fell somewhere between stalker and serial killer on Dean's creepiness scale. Sam seemed to be oblivious to it all, though, laughing and pushing his hair back behind his ears like a seventh-grade girl. Dean rolled his eyes.

He'd been worried at first, after Sam met Cas and that massive dick named Uriel and proved once and for all that you should never meet your heroes, that the whole angels-are-douchebags thing was going to crush his baby brother—especially when Castiel started popping up everywhere they went like a bad case of herpes. But it looked like Sam had managed to get over it, or at least put it behind him. Dean thought that was probably good. He had enough problems without helping Sam through a crisis of faith. They both did.

"Sign this, sir?"

Dean turned around to find that the bartender had come up behind him—not the guy with the moustache, just some other chump. He was holding out the drinks receipt. Dean set his beer down and reached for the pen—but at the last second, he stopped, tapping the end of the pen against the wooden bar.

"Oh, yeah. I need a Coke, too."

The bartender sent him a seriously dirty look at that—way dirtier than Dean felt he deserved for making the guy spray brown water in a cup and reprint a tiny slip of paper—but it was nothing like the bitchface Sam would give him if he came back to the table without the soda, so he stood his ground. The bartender turned around to slosh ice into a glass and Dean glanced over his shoulder at the wonder twins again. Sam was smiling, his head ducked forward as if to hide his dimples from Castiel; Dean wondered if he was faking, because Cas had never been that damn funny—at least not on purpose. But with the big sparkly eyes Sam had been shooting the angel all night, Cas probably didn't have to be a great conversationalist. Castiel opened his mouth and Sam leaned forward to catch every word, and Dean rolled his eyes again, rubbing a hand through his hair. He was glad Sam wasn't broken up over the angel thing. Really. He just didn't understand why Sam had to take that so far the other direction that he had become Cas's number-one fan.

"Do you need anything else?"

Dean turned back as a tall glass of Coke was set down next to his beer, the bartender shooting him a look over the register. _Do you need anything else_ sounded an awful lot like _would you sign this already_ to Dean, and for a second he was tempted not to, especially when he realized Sam's soda had cost an extra five bucks—but in the end he did the deed, dropping the pen onto the counter behind the bar where it rolled into a sink of dirty glasses.

"Great service here," Dean said, giving the bartender a look. Then he turned around and headed back through the tables, the expensive frickin' Coke in one hand and his mediocre beer in the other.

Things weren't looking so good at the table. On the one hand, Castiel wasn't staring at Sam anymore. On the other, they had both turned to look out at the white mountains and were now framed against the window, the snow coming down like crazy outside. Sam was cupping his water glass in one hand like he was posing for something, and Dean was struck with the unpleasant thought that if Sam hadn't been such an ugly girl and Cas hadn't been such a creepy-looking guy that Dean was barely comfortable with him sitting next to his younger brother, even though he knew for a fact that there were wings tucked up underneath that trench coat, the two of them might've looked like the cover of a brochure for some lame-ass lodge like this one, a couple sharing a nice dinner in a fucking snow globe. Dean double-timed it back to the table.

"All right, break it up," he said, when he was finally close enough to plunk Sam's soda down in front of him. The sound drew two sets of eyes up to his as Dean slid into his seat without pulling out the chair, the neck of his beer pointed squarely between his brother's big hazel eyes. "By the way, news flash, Sammy—you're not as pretty as you think you are."

Sam's face scrunched up in confusion and he blinked at Dean like he was having a seizure. "What?" he asked.

Dean shrugged. "You heard me." He glanced down at Sam's plate, sitting between the two of them and so empty it looked like it had been licked clean; even most of the green sludge on the bottom of the plate was gone, and Dean wondered suddenly if one of Cas's freaky angel powers was making sauce stick to a fork. "Well, what'd you think, Cas?" he asked, looking up to meet the blue eyes of the freeloader he was never taking to dinner again. "Was it twenty-dollar-good pasta?"

Castiel sent him a little frown, the one that was going to mature into a copy of Sam's bitchface if they spent too much longer staring at each other. "I don't understand. What is the relative value ratio between pasta and money?"

Dean shook his head and took another deep swallow of beer. "It's amazing how you can use all those big words and still be so stupid."

"Dean," Sam protested around the straw of his Coke—running to the angel's rescue, which was apparently his new favorite pastime. He gave Dean a look and Dean made a face right back, at which point Sam turned away, pretending to be above it all as he made eyes at Cas again. "That pasta was pretty spicy," Sam said, pushing his soda toward Castiel with one finger. "Do you need a drink, Cas?"

Castiel regarded the empty plate through narrowed eyes. "I did not register the spice."

Dean shared a glance with Sam, who scooted forward in his chair in typical fascinated Sam mode. "What do you mean?" he asked, and Castiel's gaze lifted to find Sam's again, his forehead bunched up like he wanted to explain something and was trying to find little words. Dean found that look really grating.

"I have the capacity to taste," Castiel told them, puzzling at the plate like it was going to save the world instead of just get chucked in a dishwasher in ten minutes. "But I generally don't bother."

All of a sudden Dean got what Castiel had been trying to say, and he surged forward over the table, his hand tightening around his way too empty beer bottle. "Wait a minute. You scarfed down half of Sam's expensive pasta and you tasted about as much as if I fed you a ten-dollar bill?" Dean shook his head hard, wondering what had ever possessed him to invite the angel to stick around. "Money doesn't grow on trees, Cas."

Castiel just sent him another stupid look. "I did not eat money, Dean."

"Dean," Sam chimed in, dropping one huge hand onto his collarbone like a peace offering. "It's okay. I wasn't that hungry, all right?" Dean wasn't sure that was the part he was actually pissed about, but Sam went on anyway, keeping a steadying hand on Dean's shoulder as he turned back to the mooch. "But you can taste things if you want to, right, Cas?" Dean definitely didn't care about that at all, but Castiel's nod seemed to set off all the bells in Sam's head, because all of a sudden his brother was smiling again, lifting his Coke and leaning across the table to hold it out to the angel. "Here—taste this, okay? It's really… fizzy—it's fun."

Castiel blinked at the beverage like he was pondering how a _taste_ could be _fun_ —or maybe that was what Dean was pondering, whatever—but apparently the bottomless pit in a trench coat was marching to Sam's drumbeat tonight, and Dean watched in horror as he copied Sam's pose and leaned over the edge of the table to put his lips around the straw. It was like a grotesque version of this mural Dean remembered from some diner where he and Sam had eaten once, a big painting on the back wall of a boy and a girl from the fifties or whatever sharing a soda and some really goopy looks—except even those kids had the decency to use separate straws. Of course Cas made the whole thing even weirder than it was gross by just sitting there for a few seconds with the straw in his mouth and then squinting up at Sam, giving Dean's brother his classic alien-just-kicked-off-of-home-planet-and-crash-lan ded-here expression.

"Nothing is happening," Castiel told him, drawing back from the Coke.

Sam did this half-laugh thing and shook his head. "You have to suck on it, Cas," he explained, totally ignoring the _what the fuck is wrong with you_ look Dean shot him. "Just put your lips around it and suck, okay?"

"Okay," Dean announced, his chair screeching on the wood floor as he pushed up from the table. "I have to get out of here before I hurl bite-sized cheeseburger all over you two."

Castiel just looked confused, which was his default setting, and Sam sent Dean a look like it was his own fault his mind had leapt straight into the gutter—but Dean was not taking that from his brother right now, no way, because no one could avoid the innuendo in that and if Sam were more like Dean he'd have accused his oversized baby brother of doing it on purpose. Dean shoved his chair back in with his hip and then seized his beer bottle, nearly empty though it was, and as he backed away from the table he pointed it at both of them, wishing there were a whole lot more in it so he could erase all memory of the last five minutes.

"I gotta go tap a kidney," he said, raising his eyebrows as he stared at Sam. "By the time I get back, this whole gay soda date better be over. Got it?" Then he turned on heel and retreated out of the restaurant, not interested in hearing his brother explain yet another euphemism to their holy shadow.

Dean kept himself busy in the bathroom for a good long time, and spent a few extra minutes spiking up his hair with sink water to better his chances of never having to hear Sam say something like that ever again. By the time he got back to the table, the Coke was gone, but his compadres had done him one better—they had disappeared too, jackets and all, leaving behind only the couple bucks Sam always dropped for the busboy because he thought Dean was a lousy tipper. Dean craned his head around. He saw no sign of his gigantic brother or Cas, but he did notice someone waving to him from the bar—it was the man with the porn-star moustache, and he was waving a bottle of Jack, the golden spirit sloshing in the glass. Dean took one last glance around, but then he made for that guy; he could find Sam whenever, but drinking was serious business.

"Pour you one?" the man asked as Dean sidled up to the bar, half his mind stuck trying to decide if the moustache was fake. Dean hesitated for a second, wondering if he was drinking on the house or if there was a bill coming at the end of this—but then he decided he didn't care, and he raised his fingers in the _hit me_ sign. He was a little happier than he expected to see whiskey sloshing into the short glass.

"Thanks." Dean sipped off the top layer and then jerked a thumb over his shoulder at their empty table. "You didn't see where the guys sitting there ran off to, did you?"

The man smirked under his moustache. "Ah. The great big moose making googly eyes at that man in the trench coat?" Part of Dean felt like he should be pissed at anyone making fun of his little brother, but when the bartender topped off his glass and then tipped his head toward the patio, he decided to let it go. "They're out by the fire," the man told him.

Dean glanced toward the glow of the fire pit beyond the windows, silhouettes and shadowy figures arranged all around it under the snowflakes, and then took another hit of whiskey. "Of course they are," he muttered through the beautifully bitter liquor.

The bartender stroked his moustache down against his cheeks, which made Dean about 99% sure it was fake, but no less cool, really, for that. "You want one for the road?" he asked, holding the bottle of Jack over Dean's shot glass, though he stopped short of pouring another drop into it. "It's pretty cold out there."

Dean spared a look over his shoulder again. He could go out there, sure, in case Sam needed a little angelic intervention, or Cas needed to be put in his place and Sam was trying to figure out how to do it without using the words "no," "wrong," or "don't." And he would, in a minute. But Sam was fine, and it was just Cas, and he wasn't nearly drunk enough for their nonsense yet. He turned back to the bartender with a grin that showed off his pearly whites.

"I'm gonna need at least a few more before I can go out there and face that. Hit me."

Because what the hell, after all—they were on vacation. And if his burger was going to be pint-sized, at least he could fill his stomach with whiskey.

.x.

Castiel's shoes were hissing. Sam had assured him that was normal—that it was just the leather drying from the snow he had walked through to get from the restaurant door to the circle of flagstones that surrounded the patio brazier, each stone wet with the remnants of vaporized snow. Castiel was having trouble accepting the normalcy of it. His physicality itself was an inherently unstable thing, which made it harder to understand how so much snow could have accumulated on his shoes in such a short time.

There had been other people around the fire when they'd first pushed out of the door, Sam slipping a little on the icy walk and grabbing Castiel's shoulder to keep his balance—but they were all gone now, all but the two of them, and Sam's hands had long since returned to his pockets. Castiel stood next to him just within the circle of clear flagstones and let his gaze drift from the mountains to the soles of his drying shoes, to the flames bending and twisting under the soft wind that blew into their faces. The flames held most of his interest. Castiel had always associated fire with Hell—the one fire, ever-burning and ever-hungry. But he had spent enough time with the Winchesters now that he was coming to associate fire with other things, too—with a warm hearth in a chaotic living room and melted marshmallows sticking to long fingers, and this, a fire pit on a flagstone patio under a sweeping winter storm. Castiel looked up at the snowflakes tumbling down onto the shoulders of his coat and mused on what peculiar creatures humans were, so willful and deliberate: refusing to be warm in their houses, or cold outside of them, but demanding instead to stand at the intersection of both, basking in the clash—to stoke a fire in the falling snow. Castiel wondered if what they enjoyed most was neither the warmth nor the chill, but the impossibility.

Sam pressed his hands deeper into the pockets of his blue coat and sighed softly, the exhale emerging from his lips as a puff of white steam. Castiel allowed awareness of the cold to creep over him. It was a strange sensation, like the billows of heat rising from the fire or the carbonation in Sam's drink vibrating on his tongue. Sensation itself was strange, all the more so when he sought it out. Castiel parted his lips and felt the cold air sting on the roof of his mouth, and then exhaled deliberately, watching his own white breath disappear into the storm. Somewhere inside of him there was warmth—the same as there was in Sam. Castiel wasn't sure what he thought about that.

Sometimes he wondered if Sam knew he led up to the important questions with complete silence.

"Do angels sleep, Cas?"

Castiel turned to look at his companion. Sam's eyes were soft, not focused on anything in particular, perhaps the scatter of snowflakes that brushed his face on their way down. Castiel watched one linger on his nose.

"No," he said.

The word drew Sam's eyes to his; Castiel noticed that they seemed brighter this way, a lighter shade, with so much of the snow reflected in them. "Ever?" Sam asked, as if to ground his first question, floating between them strange and unmoored. Castiel just shook his head. Sam laughed a little, barely more than a catch in his throat, and turned his whole body to face Castiel, his shoulders relaxing as he pivoted closer to the fire. "Don't you get tired sometimes?" he pressed.

Castiel hesitated, confused as always how to fit the reality of Heaven and perfect light into tiny human syllables. "Angels do… rest," he said at last, and felt his lips twist into a small frown, because it was so much more than that one little word. But it was all he could find.

He'd expected Sam's curiosity to be satisfied with that, at least—but Sam's thoughts must have been somewhere far less simple, because he only paused for a moment before pushing on, drawing both hands out of his pockets and holding them out to the flames. "But you don't dream," he guessed, flexing his fingers.

Castiel wondered why it mattered. He wondered why Sam wanted to know, and why his mind unearthed questions like this, each one brushing against Castiel like a harpist testing a string, deft fingers drinking in the sound. He answered all the same. "No. We are familiar with dreams, but we don't have them."

Sam's lips curved like he understood something Castiel hadn't said—for a long moment he smiled at his outstretched hands, and then he turned to smile at Castiel, the fire glowing in his eyes but never settling there, not like it did in Dean's. Castiel wondered what kind of a smile it was and then wondered if Sam would show him how to make a snow angel someday.

"I guess that means you really are watching over me and Dean all the time," Sam said.

Castiel tipped his head to one side. "Always, Sam," he vowed.

Sam ducked his head on a laugh. "Don't let Dean hear you say that."

"Don't let Dean hear you say what?"

Castiel turned to glance over his shoulder at the door to the restaurant and noticed Sam doing the same. He hadn't heard the door swing shut, but the crunch of Dean's footsteps over the icy patio was unmistakable, echoing against the high glass windows of the lodge and stuttering out into the snowy fields. Sam watched his brother's approach for a moment, and then glanced at Castiel before finally pushing his hands slowly back into his pockets and walking a few steps toward Dean, his shoulders hunching up to his ears as he moved away from the fire.

"We're just talking about how angels rest," Sam told him, shrugging under the heavy folds of his immense blue coat.

Dean cupped a hand around his ear, though he was close enough to them now that Castiel doubted he'd misheard. "Roost? Angels roost, you say?"

Sam rolled his eyes and kicked a wisp of snow at his brother. "You're such an ass, Dean."

Dean shrugged. "Save your bitching for later. We're headed for the outdoor pool. This guy at the bar said it's heated by natural springs or something, and he said we've got to get in there while it's snowing. Apparently all the girls think it's really awesome, so…" Dean shrugged again, his limbs deliberately loose as he grinned at his brother. "…sounded like your kind of thing, Sammy."

Sam shook his head. "Hey—I wasn't the one flirting with some guy at the bar."

"Shut up."

The Winchesters started toward the path that circled the outer edge of the lodge, still bickering, their words trailing away as they reached the first of the glass lanterns glowing over the chaos of footprints in the snow. Castiel lingered for an instant at the edge of the fire, reaching out with his borrowed form to feel the undulation of heat and the sting of the cold snowflakes on his bare skin—then Sam's head started to turn back, and in a moment the angel was beside him, his warm shoes melting the surrounding snow with every steady stride. Sam smiled at him and Dean scoffed in the back of his throat.

"If you take his hand, I'm gonna cut your fingers off," he warned.

Sam's steps faltered as he twisted to stare at his brother, confusion and surprise widening his eyes. "What? Why?" Then he seemed to change his mind about the questions, and shot a wary look at Castiel. "Who are you talking to?" he asked instead.

Dean shrugged. "Either of you."

Castiel didn't entirely understand what had happened, but he kept his hands away from Sam's all the same.


	3. High-Class Recreation

Dean hadn't been drunk when he and Sam got into the hot tub. He'd made it out of the dugout and onto the field, sure, thanks to a little whiskey that turned out to be on the house after all. He wasn't sure how many he'd had, in the end—it was hard to tell when the porn star behind the bar never waited for him to finish what was in his cup before doling out a refill—but it hadn't been enough to deal with Sam fussing over trying to get Cas into the pool, and Dean had wondered if he was going to spend the rest of the night too sober to take the edge off his two tagalongs. Fortunately, though, Dean had discovered a really cool thing—too little food plus just enough alcohol plus seriously hot water had basically cooked his brain, and he now had an awesome buzz going, all the way off the field and out of the park.

Between his buzz and the nice water temp and Sam chilled out and kicking his legs on the other side of what had to be an extra-large in-ground hot tub, since Sam could actually extend his legs without kicking the other wall—well, all in all Dean was having a pretty good moment. He might even be willing to take a night off every once in a while, if it was going to be like this.

There was really only one thing puncturing his good mood.

"What the fuck is he doing up there?" Dean settled his back against a pounding jet and squinted at the motionless figure standing at the railing of the deck that overlooked the pool area. It was so dark up there that Dean could really only make out the guy's basic shape, but that was enough—it wasn't like there were a lot of nerds in trench coats running around Sam's alpine dream lodge. "Is he still staring at us?" Dean demanded, glancing at his brother through the rising steam. "I warned him about the stalking thing."

Sam had been in full-out relaxation mode, leaning his head back onto the flagstones that rimmed the hot tub—Dean didn't know how he could stand it, because those rocks were so cold they stung like broken glass—but at his brother's words he lifted his head and peered up at the railing, searching for a person between the clouds of steam and snowflakes. A smile that was way too fond and not nearly pissed enough crept onto Sam's face as he found the stalker in question. "Well, he didn't want to come in the pool area, so I said he could just… wait for us somewhere. I guess that's as good a spot as any."

Dean sent Sam as nasty a look as he could manage on a buzz in the middle of a hot tub. "Oh. So you did this."

Sam was apparently having way too good a time; somehow he didn't seem mad or creeped out at all, and he just rolled his eyes at Dean, the wet tips of his floppy girl hair curling up against his neck. "He doesn't mean anything by it. He's just watching out for us, Dean." The dopey-happy expression that came over Sam's face when he said it made Dean wonder what he'd missed while he was living it up at the bar, and also, separately, made him choke back the bile that mushiness always brought into his throat. Or maybe that was all the alcohol cooking in his stomach. It ticked him off either way.

"He's not watching _out_ for us, Sam. He's just watching us," Dean argued, waving one hand at the angel who just could not be the best Heaven had to offer. The older hunter shook his head. "There's no _out_. Could use a little more _out_ right now." He turned away from Sam to send a few gestures Castiel's way, an all-purpose combo of _get away from there, I'm going to choke you to death_ and Dean's personal favorite, _up yours_ , but Cas didn't flinch—Dean doubted he'd even made the angel blink.

Sam slid back down against the wall of the hot tub and closed his eyes. "He doesn't understand hand signals, Dean. Not even _fuck you_."

Dean mimed beating the awkward bastard with a club anyway. "Well, that's definitely the next up on Planet Earth 101," he said. Sam just made a noise in the back of his throat, one that sounded like _drop it_ and _I don't care about your problems_ all rolled into one. Dean was tempted to splash a little boiling water in his brother's face, because that definitely was not the correct response to a creepy thirty-something guy with a trench coat and a five o'clock shadow watching you in the hot tub—but Sam looked pretty comfy on those ridiculously cold rocks, and Dean didn't want to waste his buzz on either of them. So in the end he generously decided to let it go this one time, and he sat back and closed his eyes like his brother, listening to the hiss of steam meeting snowflakes above the surface of the water.

Drifting off felt sort of weird to Dean. Relaxing for him meant keeping himself moving, loud music in a fast car, so that his thoughts stayed surface level and nothing sour had a chance to linger. Staying still too long was usually a bad idea for them anyway, what with every monster and their ugly mothers eager to take a bite out of the Winchesters. But they had the pool area to themselves, and the scariest thing likely to jump out at them was a bunch of skinny rich people, so gradually Dean let himself float away a little, cultivating his buzz and feeling the snow melting on his face. He was enjoying a daydream in which the blond woman had been a whole lot easier when Sam broke the silence.

"It's really nice out here."

Dean's eyes popped open again, and he blinked at his brother, sitting up against the wall of the hot tub now with snowflakes sprinkling his dark hair. Then he rolled his eyes. "No way. Don't you start that, Sam. You are not sucking me into one of your chick-flick moments."

Sam mumbled something that sounded like "I'm not, I was just saying" under his breath, but Dean wasn't taking that shit from him, because it was common knowledge that you couldn't talk about anything in a hot tub during a light snowfall without it becoming a seriously girly moment, unless it was how much more awesome the hot tub would be if there were a bunch of topless chicks in it or if a guy in a penguin coat came around to take your drink order. He tried to force his thoughts back to the blond woman with the stupendous rack—the one in his head, not that bitch at the bar—but his eyes fell on Castiel watching them from the deck one floor up, and then he was thinking about angels again, and angels led him back to Sam, pouting on the other side of the hot tub. And Sam was fine—Dean was positive of it. But angels and that little frown on his sensitive brother's face chased each other around in his head until Dean couldn't take anymore, and he slapped the surface of the water, startling Sam with the sudden spray.

"Look, Sam—about Cas," Dean tried, scrubbing hard fingers through his hair. "Sorry. For telling him he could hang around. I didn't think about whether that'd bother you."

Sam just stared at him, his forehead bunched up in confusion. "Bother me why?"

Dean swallowed a groan. Sam could be so damn smart sometimes, and smart-mouthed the rest of it—but somehow when Dean didn't want to talk about something, Sam never seemed to be able to string the pieces together.

"He's an angel." Dean waved at the figure on the distant railing. "The whole angel thing. I should've asked if you were okay having an angel up our asses all the time. It was a dick move, and it makes me almost as much of a tool as he is." Dean paused and caught his brother's gaze, and then raised his eyebrows, trying to make Sam get how fucking serious he was about this. "You want me to get rid of him?"

Sam laughed in the back of his throat, looking half incredulous and half like he was waiting for the Candid Cameras to jump out. "He's not a waiter, Dean. You can't just send him away."

Dean shrugged with one shoulder. "Watch me." He started to stand up, intent on kicking their winged lurker off the railing if he had to walk all the way up there and physically throw him off—but before he could even get out of his seat, Sam reached out and grabbed his arm, shaking his head so fast Dean wondered if it would pop off.

"Dean—no. He's fine, okay?" Dean sank back onto the hot tub bench, and slowly Sam released him, dragging his fingers through the water and watching the ripples spread out under the steam. "He's an angel, yeah, but… he's just Cas." Sam looked up at him and nodded once, and Dean nodded back, to prove he got it. Then he hurried back to the lighter end of his brain, because they were dangerously close to a touchy-feely moment and nothing broke that up like busting Sam's chops.

"Cas is Cas—wow. That was deep, Sam. Way to put that education to good use."

"Shut up," Sam told him, reaching out to deliver a weak-ass punch to Dean's shoulder. Then Sam hesitated, biting his bottom lip, and reached up to fiddle with the damp hairs sticking to the back of his neck. "Actually, I was more worried about… you know…"

Dean rolled his eyes. "Oh, for God's sake, Sam. Just spit it out. Whatever it is, it can't be as bad as listening to you beating around the bush for the next ten minutes."

Sam's eyebrows lifted up to his hairline, like he wasn't sure about that. "I was wondering if you wanted me to get out of here," he said slowly, drawing the words out like they tasted weird. "Give you guys some time alone."

Dean almost bit his tongue in half. Then he sort of wished he had, because at least then he'd be dead and wouldn't have to deal with the sudden urge to hurl burger and whiskey all over his younger brother. "What?" he demanded. "No. No! Time alone for what?" Then he changed his mind, because every thought that came after that was just too fucking sickening. "No, don't answer that." Dean shook his head, glaring at Sam and the tiny smile that was blooming on his brother's face. "You're disgusting, Sam," Dean told him. "That is the worst fucking thing I've ever… what the hell is wrong with you?"

Sam was full-out laughing at him now, like he thought it was funny that Dean was in serious danger of losing everything he'd eaten in the last twelve hours. Well, it wasn't going to be funny when the hot tub jets were blowing it back on him—that much Dean was sure. "He's your guardian angel," Sam said, as if that explained everything.

Dean wrenched around to scowl at him. "Oh—so if you had an angel, you'd want _time alone_ with him in the hot tub?" Then his face scrunched up, because that horrible acid taste was back in his mouth. "You know what, never mind. I don't want to know." Dean paused to catch his breath, doing what he could to settle his stomach before he went back to burning a hole in Sam's forehead. "You are one screwy bastard, Sam. There's a half-robot, half-alien dude skulking up there in the dark in a bad trench coat, and you think I…" Dean decided he couldn't actually finish that sentence without killing himself, or Sam, or maybe just Cas, so he broke off, staring up into the mess of snowflakes coming down on their heads. "Horrible, Sam. I feel like I've gotta sleep with somebody just to get that taste out of my mouth."

Sam pressed his lips together, trying to keep his smile under control. "Some guy at the bar bought you a few drinks, right?"

Dean lunged across the hot tub and dunked his brother under the water.

Sam was too strong for Dean to hold him under long, especially with those long grasshopper legs for leverage—but Dean held his ground long enough to get the point across, and Sam came up spluttering, trying to laugh and cough and push his hair out of his face at the same time. Dean stepped back and crossed his arms, ready to go again if Sam hadn't learned his lesson.

"Okay, okay," Sam choked out, smiling through the bangs plastered to his cheeks. "I get it. Not funny. But Dean, I… wow, that is hot…" Sam broke off and mopped his hands down his face, rubbing his eyes to get the last of the water out, and when he looked up at Dean his expression was serious again, those damn puppy dog eyes his brother had been perfecting for about twenty-four years out in full force. "I guess I just have to know… are we okay, Dean?" Sam asked, looking up at him like a half-drowned cocker spaniel under the mess of his wet hair. "Are you happy?"

There was no way Dean was doing this—not after the torture Sam had already put him through. "No, I'm not happy," Dean told him, blowing sharply up to knock a snowflake from his nose. "I had like a quarter of a cheeseburger, there are no hot girls here, and we're being stalked by a shady guy on a balcony who's staring at us like he's getting paid to do it…" Dean's mind suddenly spun off on a tangent of wondering if Cas did, in fact, get paid to stare at him out of the dark, but he pushed that away, turning from Sam to make a few more menacing gestures in Castiel's direction. "Yeah, I'm talking about you!" Dean shouted—but even though his voice echoed like mad in the open-air pool area and he was positive Cas heard him, he got no response; their angel was apparently in sleep mode. Which was somehow no less creepy.

"Dean." Sam grabbed his arm and pulled him back. At first Dean thought his goody two-shoes brother was worried about them getting thrown out or something for yelling, which on second thought probably wasn't allowed in rich people's pools—but one look at Sam's face was enough to show him what was really going on. Sam held onto Dean's arm and tilted his head to one side, a worried frown tugging at his lips. "Dean, I'm serious. Are you? Happy?"

Sam always got him one way or the other. Dean squeezed his eyes shut to curse the last ten minutes for totally sucking the fun out of his drunken boil, and then he pulled slowly away from Sam's hand, digging his fingers into the spikes of his hair.

"You always suck me in eventually," Dean grumbled, before he opened his eyes and found his brother's through the rising curls of steam. "Yeah, Sam. I'm happy. You're breathing, I'm topside… we're good, okay?"

Dean hated having the big conversations. He hated even having eleven words of the big conversations. But the way Sam's face instantly relaxed made it worth it, at least every once in a while, and he watched a smile sneak across his brother's lips instead of the frown, lighting Sam's eyes for a second before he ducked his head to stare at the water.

"Okay," Sam said.

Dean nodded. "Okay. Then it's all good." A moment later he reconsidered that, though, catching sight of his fingers under the water in the thin light from the main lodge. "Except I'm getting pruny, man. We gotta get out."

Dean was the first one up the stairs. It was probably a really good thing, in the end, because the full combination of heat and alcohol hit him like a wrecking ball when he stepped out of the water, and he crumpled back in, half-crushing Sam as he fought to stand up straight. Sam shot him the look reserved for Dean when he was smashed, but Dean had a ton of practice ignoring that, and he just made a face at his brother, rubbing a towel over his head before he tottered toward the door to the locker rooms. He felt a whole lot soberer a second later, though, when Sam stopped to gesture to Cas that they were headed in, and Castiel actually nodded back, drawing away from the railing until he was out of sight. Dean stopped dead on the freezing fucking flagstones and made a face at him.

"Oh, sure, he understands you," Dean griped.

Sam was getting pretty good at the bitchy eye-roll.

.x.

The locker room was way nicer than any Sam could ever remember being in before. For one thing, he didn't feel like he was in danger of getting athlete's foot just from standing in the shower. Dean had made fun of him for years for wearing his sandals into the locker rooms of YMCAs and truck stops, which they used sometimes when they were on the road without a motel or a hunt got really messy—of course, the joke had been on Dean when he got a horribly persistent case of ringworm that itched like crazy on and off for two months. Still, even with his sandals on, Sam had never felt totally comfortable in those showers. Maybe it was because there was always some guy shaving at the sink with a disposable razor and a mini can of Barbasol. Maybe it was because the shower stalls rarely had anything more than a flimsy curtain, which Dean had liked to yank back once Sam was bathing, exposing him to the rest of the locker room. Maybe it was just the persistent dampness of every one he'd ever been in, the weirdly clinging moistness of too many people showering and bad ventilation. Really, it was hard to pick.

The locker room at this lodge, by contrast, was almost perfect. They had the place to themselves, which was nice. The shower stalls had tile floors that he didn't mind walking on in bare feet, and even before you got to the curtain that held in the spray, each stall had an actual door—a door with a lock on it. The fact that Sam had locked his even though he and Dean were the only people in the locker room at the moment said a lot about who his brother still was, even though he was almost thirty. And even though the room was sort of wet, like always, Sam got the feeling that if anything lingered in here, it was disinfectant, not foot rot.

Truly, almost perfect. And the only thing that wasn't perfect couldn't really be blamed on the lodge. It was Sam's fault for being related to him.

"Seriously, Sam—who would you pick? And you better not say anybody lame."

Sam wished that he and Dean were arguing about politics, or musical artists, or hell, fantasy football picks, even though Sam didn't know how that was played. But that just wouldn't be Dean. No, Dean was the person shouting to him over the noise of both showers because he wanted to fight about which cartoon character was the coolest animated mouse.

"I dare you to come up with another mouse as cool as Fievel."

Sam stared up at the showerhead and rolled his eyes. He always meant to be above stupid debates like this, and he was never quite sure how they'd gotten to this point. If Sam sucked Dean into chick-flick moments, then Dean sucked Sam into these: moments of such intense stupidity that they lowered the IQ of the entire room.

Sam was really glad that was just him and Dean right now.

"I liked the Rescuers," Sam threw back, pouring some of the complimentary mint-green shampoo into his palm and dragging it back through his hair. The strands tugged against his skin, like they always did after he'd been in chlorine; he worked the clumps apart with his fingers as he listened to Dean ranting in the next stall.

"The Rescuers? That is pathetic, Sam. Any mouse named Bernard is obviously a nerd." There was a pause, and then a snicker, and Sam swore he could hear Dean grinning at the plastic wall between them. "Oh, wait—you probably liked Bianca."

It was such a Dean jab that Sam didn't even bother responding, just turning to face the curtain and tipping his head back to let the water rush through his hair. The curtain rippled a little in a sudden breeze, and Sam stepped back fully into the spray, glad to be in a place where the hot water actually lasted the full length of a shower.

"Besides," Dean was saying, "the Rescuers were sissy British mice, or Scottish—something."

Sam washed out one ear with the tip of his finger. "Hungarian. But just Bianca."

"Exactly," Dean said, dismissing most of Western Europe with a single word. Sam heard him gargling with a mouthful of shower water, and then the unmistakable sound of his brother spitting against the tile. "Fievel was an American hero. Show a little patriotism, Sam."

Sam frowned and raked conditioner back through his hair. "The Mousekewitzes were immigrants."

"The who?" Dean called over the shower.

Sam rolled his eyes. "The Mousekewitzes. Fievel Mousekewitz."

"Gesundheit," Dean said. Then there was a crank, and the water turned off in the other shower, followed by the rattle of the curtain being pushed back. "Well, whatever. I'm getting out. Don't stay in there too long messing with your hair, Bianca." Then the door of the next shower stall creaked open, and Dean's footsteps moved away into the rest of the locker room, his wet feet slapping on the white tile.

Sam leaned back on his heels and mouthed a few choice words at the shower nozzle. That was just Dean all over—starting a stupid fight and then just deciding he was done and taking off like it was Sam who'd brought up cartoon mice in the first place. He spent a few extra minutes under the spray convincing himself not to bring it up again, no matter how irritating Dean was. Then he turned off the shower and yanked back the curtain—and was suddenly staring into startling blue eyes. Sam gasped and slipped backward on the wet tiles. For a second he was positive he was going to crack his head open against the wall, but the shampoo dispenser stopped his slide, scraping a line of fire down his spine that burned like an open wound. Sam managed to get his feet under him with one hand braced on the shower dial. Once he was sure he wasn't going to wind up on his back with his legs splayed all over the tile, he turned back to the angel who'd appeared into his shower stall, his heart thumping in his ears.

"Cas," Sam managed. It came out more like a hiss than a greeting, because his back was still on fire, but Castiel didn't seem to notice, staring at Sam with all of his usual blankness. Then the angel's eyes flickered south, and even though Sam was about 120% positive that Castiel didn't even register nudity, he couldn't help the flush that burst onto his cheeks all the same, and he snatched his towel from the curtain rod and jerked it around his waist, struggling to hold the ends closed. "Uh… Cas, what… what are you doing in here?" Sam forced out.

Castiel's eyes snapped back to his face with absolutely no change in expression, which was… good, maybe? Somehow it didn't make Sam any less uncomfortable.

"Hello, Sam," Castiel replied at last. "I apologize. I did not realize you were unclothed."

Sam was tempted to ask what Cas thought he was doing behind the curtain with the shower on, but he thought better of it, because the angel probably hadn't thought anything about it at all. It wasn't Castiel's fault he was basically starting from scratch. If this was anyone's fault, Sam decided, it was probably Dean's, because Dean said he'd covered bathroom etiquette with Cas way back at the beginning, but he obviously hadn't done a thorough job.

Dean wasn't interested in taking responsibility for the angel in Sam's shower. But he did do a classic double-take when Sam and Castiel came out of the stall together, Sam clutching his towel around his waist as tight as it would go.

"Aw, damn it, Cas," Dean said. He was already fully dressed and lounging on one of the locker room benches, but at the sight of them he got to his feet and shoved his hands in his pockets, shaking his head slowly back and forth. "You and this bathroom thing, man. How many talks we gotta have?"

Castiel just looked confused and a little damp, his coat speckled with the castoff from Sam's post-shower flail. Sam glanced at him and then back at his brother, giving a small shrug as he moved to dig in their locker. All of a sudden he really wished he'd worn things that were easier to pull on, instead of a shirt covered in buttons. "I told him he could be in the locker room with us," Sam admitted. "Before, when he didn't want to come in the pool."

Dean gave him a fairly revolted look at that, like he'd just admitted to liking romantic comedies—but the majority of his attention was on Castiel, standing stock still and sort of tilted wrong in the middle of the locker room. Sam wondered if he had a faulty alignment button or something.

"Did you tell him he could join you in the shower?" Dean wanted to know, though he was talking more to Castiel than to Sam. Castiel's head tipped farther to one side.

"I was not in the shower," he assured Dean. "I was waiting on the other side of the curtain."

Dean made a disgusted sound in the back of his throat. "Be creepier, psycho." He glanced over at Sam, who'd been trying to surreptitiously get one foot into his boxers without dropping his towel—then Dean stepped forward and clapped Castiel on the shoulder, shoving him a step toward the wall. "You know what? You're in time-out. No more staring at people while they're naked. Go stand in the corner, face the wall, and don't turn around until I say so. Okay? No—not the corner with the mirror. The one by the door. Get over there."

"Dean," Sam tried, hopping a little to keep his balance as his boxers got caught on his toes.

"No, Sam," his brother said, turning around just long enough to level a finger at Sam before he was manhandling Castiel into the corner again. "If there's no punishment, he'll never learn. Plus I'm not hanging around here for an hour while you try to get dressed behind your towel like a little girl. Just put your clothes on. Move it, Cas."

Sam had about a thousand reasons on the tip of his tongue why they couldn't discipline an angel of the Lord like a delinquent grade-schooler—or maybe they weren't reasons so much as the words _angel of the Lord_ blaring through his brain in huge neon letters. But he didn't get the chance to protest anymore, because the second Dean started pushing Cas started walking, and he put himself in the corner and faced the wall just like Dean had told him to. Sam wondered, not for the first time, whose idea it had been to give Dean of all people an angel to order around at will, and then he just focused on getting his pants on, trying not to feel too awkward about the fact that even though Castiel was in the corner Dean was now watching him with a critical eye, like he was timing him. Sam got dressed as fast as he could, but it still wasn't fast enough to get them out of there before a middle-aged man and his sons walked into the locker room and stared at the angel in the corner, and Castiel, ever eager to explain his purpose, told them, "So that I do not stare." Sam grabbed the back of his brother's shirt and Castiel's arm and propelled them out the door so fast he left it swinging.

Castiel looked confused and Sam was just flat-out mortified, but their awkward angel seemed to have put Dean in a better mood, at least—he was cackling so hard, as the three of them moved through the corridors around the locker room and headed for the exit, that Sam thought he could see tears in the corners of his brother's eyes. Or maybe he was just that smashed. Sam decided it was a little of both when Dean lurched in between him and Cas and threw an arm over both of their shoulders, his hyena grin out in full force.

"You know what, Cas?" Dean said, tightening his arm around the angel's neck and tugging Castiel's head into a weird angle. "You are a serious pain, but you can be a riot. I'm willing to forgive you for ogling my brother's ass."

Castiel's eyes narrowed, the way they often did before he vanished into thin air, and for a second Sam wondered if he and Dean were about to be one support short of a functioning huddle, careening off into the thick log walls. But instead of taking off, Castiel reached out and touched one hand to Dean's stomach—and all of a sudden Dean was standing a lot straighter, his eyes wild with surprise at his newly discovered balance.

"What the…?" Dean reached down and touched his own stomach, and then his head; then he rounded on the angel, his jaw hanging open in astonished rage. "What the fuck did you do?" Dean demanded, ripping his arms back to his sides. "Where's my buzz?"

Castiel just cocked his head. "Your liver was damaged. I have repaired it."

Sam liked when it was his turn to have a good laugh.

.x.

Playing pool drunk was harder than Dean remembered. His usual pattern was basically the opposite: he found a guy who was too drunk for his own good and then faked his own crapulence, because it was stupid to try to roll someone when you were actually smashed. And Dean wasn't really drunk now, either, since Cas had erased his awesome hot tub buzz with the touch of one frickin' finger. But Dean had downed a few beers since then, and there was a persistent tingle at the back of his brain that was sort of distracting—not enough to throw off all of his shots, but enough that he hadn't shot Sam and Castiel off the table yet. Which was embarrassing, because Cas was not a natural at this.

Apparently Heaven did not have a pool hall. Or if it did, Cas was one of those nerdy stick angels who spent all his time in the library.

The lodge's game room was way more awesome than Dean had expected—besides the three pool tables, they had two foosball games, air hockey, some kind of tabletop shuffleboard, and a miniature bowling game where all the pins were on wires, which Dean sort of though was crap and sort of wanted to try at the same time. They hadn't been able to dredge up six bucks in singles to play it—and Sam had bitched that they couldn't kick out the knot of little kids gathered around the mini bowling lanes—but they had managed to score one of the pool tables and settled in for a few rounds of cutthroat. The first game was an easy shutout for Dean, because Castiel was basically the king of suck and only got about three shots before Dean shot him off the table. It hadn't taken him much longer to get rid of Sam.

Dean had enjoyed crushing them. It was a good feeling. But they were on the second game now, and the fact that the needle in Dean's brain was slowly tipping toward drunk while Sam played some rigorous defense was really getting in the way of him wiping Castiel off the table. He was going to get that feathered sonofabitch, though. Nobody messed with Dean's high and got away with it.

"Dean, knock it off."

Dean poked his head up from where he'd been lining up a shot on Cas's eleven ball, one of only two he had left, to find Sam standing across the table from him, arms folded over his chest. Sam had a special flavor of the bitchface on, one Dean had decided meant _leave my ugly duckling alone_ , because it seemed to pop up whenever Sam was getting between Dean and having a good time at Castiel's expense. Dean raised an eyebrow and Sam jerked his head to his right, where the angel in question was standing, stiff as if the pool cue he was clutching like a spear were rammed up his holy ass instead. One of Sam's hands flopped at his side like a placating fish.

"Leave him a couple balls, okay?"

Dean scoffed and leaned into his shot again. "No way, Sammy. That's not how the game is played." Dean bent his arm nice and slow and sent the white ball spinning—and though it missed the eleven, probably because his brain had vibrated at just the wrong moment and corked his aim, he straightened casually and blew the chalk off his stick all the same, sending Cas a look that promised he'd get it next time.

Dean had never underplayed himself at pool—not even when he was crushing a cute girl. There was no way he was going to go easy on a bathroom-obsessed lech in a bad trench coat who stared at his brother's ass every time Sam leaned across the table to make a long shot.

Okay, so maybe Cas was just trying to watch the shot. But Dean didn't care. He was taking that punk down either way.

Sam made his long shot and sent one of Dean's balls spinning into the corner pocket, which brought him and Sam down to four balls each. His brother had a fucking beautiful shot on Castiel's fourteen, but like the candy-ass he was Sam didn't take it, just banked the cue ball off the bumpers and let it roll around the table like it was making a reunion tour. Dean totally would have pulled his ball back out for the scratch if the table hadn't been eating them for good every time one sank in a pocket. Instead, all he could do was catch his brother's gaze and give Sam a severely disappointed head-shake.

"You stop that," Dean said, pointing his cue at Sam across the table. "His balls are not sacred."

Sam blinked at him about eight times, which was enough to drive that bad word choice through the fog in Dean's head. He hadn't meant that—but now that the thought was out there, Dean's drunken brain couldn't help wondering, you know. He sized Cas up as he stepped around the table to the white ball; the angel noticed him staring and sent back a little glare of his own, because he was apparently in a bitchy mood. Probably because he sucked.

Castiel carefully lined up a shot on Dean's three, but Dean wasn't worried, because the only ball Cas had managed to sink so far in two games of cutthroat was his own fifteen. Cas set his cue on top of his left hand and then thrust it forward with all his might. Like a true geek, he missed the white ball entirely—but to be fair, Dean was pretty sure that if he'd been attacking a person instead of a pool table he would have punctured a kidney.

Castiel's cue swung back and slapped the side of the white ball, and the three of them watched it roll three sad inches over green felt. Dean struggled to keep his grin from eating his face.

"Dude, you royally suck at this," he announced, moving forward to take his shot. But Sam got in his way and pushed him back a step, guarding Cas and the cue ball with his gargantuan moose shoulders.

"Dean, give him another shot, okay?" Sam suggested, his eyebrows raised in that classic _do it for me_ way that he'd been using since he was small enough that the words didn't always come out right. But Dean had already caved to that in the hot tub, and he had a once-a-week limit on doing stupid shit just because Sam wanted him to.

"Why bother, Sam?" Dean asked. He reached out and snagged his half-full bottle of beer from the corner of the table and took a satisfied swig. "It's not like anything different's going to happen. You can lead a horse to water, but you can't stop him from drowning himself in the shallow end." That metaphor had made more sense in Dean's head, where it wasn't just water but a swimming pool and a horse that couldn't swim—but whatever, Sam had probably gotten the basic point, which was that Castiel sucked ass.

Sam just crossed his arms over his pool cue and tipped his head to one side. "Well, if nothing's going to change, it doesn't matter if he tries again, does it?"

Dean hated Sam's mind games while he was drunk.

"Fine," Dean grumbled, throwing up his arms. "Go again, Cas. See if you can actually hit a ball this time. Even the white one. Impress me."

Cas gave the table a look like it might pop up and chew his arm off. Sam just rolled his eyes, giving his brother that same old unimpressed look that Dean was long immune to—but the one beer Dean had wrestled into him must have really screwed with Sam's head, because the second he moved to stand next to Cas, he was suddenly all gangly limbs and weird angles, fidgeting with his pool cue and brushing his hair back like a seventh-grade girl trying to ask the class nerd to a sock hop.

"Okay, Cas," Sam started, trying to smile at their loser angel. "Um… can I show you the cue thing again? Dean sort of… left a few steps out…"

He glanced at Dean with his evil eye out in full force, but Dean just shrugged. The "two hands, point and shoot" method worked for most people. It wasn't his fault Cas was an awkward ass who couldn't follow directions. Sam turned back to Castiel with a shake of his head.

"So you balance the cue on the edge of the table, and you brace it like this…" Sam assumed the position, and Castiel tried to copy him, but any idiot could see he had no idea what to do with his left hand. He looked at Sam and Sam looked back, biting his lip, and for a second Dean hoped that his brother would just drop it for once and let Cas flounder in the shallow end—but no, that wasn't Sam's style, and after a beat Sam seemed to make the exact opposite choice, setting his cue upright against the table and taking a deep breath like he'd decided to swallow the poison and get it over with. "Okay, we're just gonna do this," Sam muttered. Then he was all up in Castiel's space, and Dean's freaky distance alarms were blaring as Sam took Cas's left hand and curled it carefully around the pool cue, smoothing his fingers down. "You use this hand to guide your shot—slide the cue through these fingers, okay?" Sam said, giving a smile that was ridiculously too close to the side of Cas's head when the angel obligingly moved the cue a few inches. "Yeah, like that. Keep steady pressure on the cue so that it doesn't slip during the shot. Like this," he added, squeezing Castiel's left hand again. Dean was drunk enough that he actually let Sam get away with that until Sam put his other arm all the way around Castiel to position his second hand, at which point Dean spit his mouthful of beer right back into the bottle.

"Sam!" he shouted through the backwash. He got some shocked looks from the mom and two kids playing air hockey, but at least he got Sam's attention, too, his brother craning his giraffe neck around to blink at him with those big stupid eyes.

"What?" Sam asked, like he had no idea he had Cas trapped between plaid and a pool cue.

Dean set his beer down hard on the edge of the pool table. "Step away from the jackass in the trench coat." Sam looked at him as if to say _what the hell_ , but Dean just rolled his eyes, because he would beat this into his brother if it came to that. "That's not how you teach guys to play pool," Dean told him, jerking his head in the universal symbol for _get your ass out of there_. "It's only okay to get that close if you're flirting with a hot girl—and she better be really fucking hot, Sammy. So back off." Sam took a confused step back, and Dean darted around the table before he could close in again, grabbing Cas's hands—from the front, damn it—and shoving them into the right spots on the pool cue. "Here and here, and push the damn thing," he said, staring into Castiel's blank expression. "Got it yet? Christ."

Castiel's eyes narrowed—probably for the name in vain thing—but he kept his hands where they'd been put and turned back to the game, lining up a shot as Dean walked around to the other side of the table to snatch his beer again. Dean took a long drink and shook his head at Sam.

"Seriously, Sam. If you don't watch yourself, you're gonna wind up getting a proposition—and not the cool kind. I swear I taught you better than—"

Castiel pulled his arm back and slammed his cue into the white ball. It hopped, hit the bumper and leapt up to nail Dean in the crotch with a force that practically knocked the wind out of him. Dean crumpled with a shout, barely catching himself on the edge of the table. The white ball plummeted to the ground and smashed his toes right through his shoe, and Dean jerked his knee up, banging it hard on the lip of the pool table—and yeah, maybe he let out like a sailor then, but who the fuck could blame him when the guardian angel from hell had just socked him in the balls with crushing force? Dean wasn't sure for about thirty seconds of blinding white pain that Cas hadn't popped one of them.

"Fuck on a stick, Cas!" Dean rasped out, when he finally recovered enough to glare at Castiel instead of just staring bug-eyed at the floor. Sam was laughing his head off, holding himself up with his pool cue, and Dean spared a glance for him too—but only one of these people had bruised his package, and his green eyes shot back to Castiel as another throb of pain blared through the family jewels. "There is no fucking way that was an accident. If I die from a broken dick, I swear I'm gonna get your ass fired when I get upstairs—"

Dean hauled back the arm holding his beer bottle—just to gesture with it probably—and didn't hear Sam's gasp of, "Dean, watch it!" until about four seconds too late—a.k.a., four seconds after someone behind him screamed as the bottom sixth of his beer splashed out of the bottle and hit them in the face. Dean turned around to see the short, angry woman from the bunkhouse standing right behind him, rubbing microbrew out of her eyes. Dean wondered what the hell she'd been doing there and then wondered how she'd managed to take his beer in the face when she only came up to, like, his mid-bicep. Then the angry woman looked up at him and pierced him with horribly bloodshot blue eyes, and Dean started wondering if the door to their room had a deadbolt.

Wendigos, werewolves, and a guardian angel that was more like a trained assassin—but Dean Winchester was gonna die in a high-class ski lodge, smothered by a tiny lady with an all-hemp, down-free pillow.


	4. A Great Night's Sleep

Like so many things, human aesthetics escaped Castiel. Certain concepts he grasped, at least in the abstract: grandness, beauty, majesty, the aspiration of encompassing a higher ideal in physical form. The fish on the wall offered none of these. Castiel tipped his head to one side and studied the oblong, asymmetrical wooden body, the rough notches cut into its dorsal fin for scales, and the great, staring eyes protruding from its flat face, all of which gave him a vague sense of unpleasantness. Castiel couldn't see anything about the fish that made it inherently worth hanging on a wall, especially in the corridor outside of the lodge's restaurant, where it had high visibility. But he hadn't been particularly impressed by the posters of blond women in bikinis tacked up in a bar the Winchesters frequented in South Dakota, either, and Dean had explained that those were classics.

"Cas?"

Castiel had lost track of the Winchesters in his scrutiny of the fish. At the soft sound of his nickname, he glanced over his shoulder to find that Sam had come up behind him, his hands tucked into the pockets of his jeans. Dean was nowhere in sight. Sam's curious eyes flickered from Castiel to the strange fish, and then he gave a small smile. Castiel wondered if the fish made more sense to him.

"Hey, sorry about that," Sam said, rocking back on the heels of his heavy brown shoes. "I didn't mean to leave you behind, but Dean sort of took off, so…"

Castiel turned with a small frown. "What did Dean take off?" he asked.

A short laugh burst from Sam's lips, barely more than an exhale but still enough to tell Castiel that he'd misunderstood something again. "No, um… I just meant, he wanted to get to the bar in time for last call," Sam clarified, hooking a thumb over his shoulder in the direction of the restaurant. "He said we could go back to the lodge if we left him the car, but I don't want him driving in the snow when he's smashed. So would you… I mean, do you mind hanging out for a while?"

Castiel followed the line of Sam's thumb to the doorway of the restaurant, all of its tables deserted now, though he could hear laughter coming from somewhere within, out of sight from the hallway. Dean's voice was easily recognizable in the mix. He seemed to be remarkably intoxicated again already. Castiel's eyes flitted back to Sam.

"I do not mind… hanging out," he said, working through the words carefully.

Sam's smile widened a little at the corners. "Okay. If you want, there's this sort of sitting area above the restaurant, where you can look out the windows…" The young man paused, and Castiel recognized the look on his face as one of uncertainty—an expression that Sam wore so often, and that Dean never had. Then Sam took a breath and reached out to grab the sleeve of Castiel's coat between his thumb and forefinger, and tugged. "Here, follow me."

It was a strange hold, Castiel decided, as Sam took a step backward and he followed, drawn by that tentative pull. He had been grabbed before, because Dean liked to emphasize his will through physical force, seizing the angel's arm and wrenching him forward as if the brittle bones of his fingers could really restrain Castiel if he chose to break free. Sam's hold was nothing like that. He almost couldn't feel it—just a slight tension on the cuff at his wrist, like a silk thread pulling taut between two spindles, ready to snap at the slightest resistance. He offered none. Somehow the hesitance of Sam tugging on one corner of his coat was so much more persuasive than force had ever been, and without thought he let Sam lead him up the first flight of stairs he'd ever ascended, too preoccupied until Sam released him at the top to notice how strange it felt to rise by bending his knees instead of beating his wings.

The area above the restaurant was dim; a large opening in the center of the space allowed for the restaurant's immense stone chimney, and looking down over the railing Castiel could see the tables laid out with clean silverware and empty glasses, and he could hear voices at the bar, hidden by the floor beneath his feet. Along the wall were large picture windows looking out over the landscape, and in front of each sat an array of furniture, all of it dark and empty like the room itself. Sam chose two chairs at a window facing east, and Castiel followed his lead, sitting carefully in the second one as Sam sunk down and leaned his head back along the wicker crown. A burst of laughter erupted from the bar below them, and Sam's lips twitched up in a smile, which he directed at Castiel with a small tilt of his head.

"Dean's laughing at his own jokes," he said, with a certainty that made Castiel wonder if Sam knew every sound his brother made, its meaning and its mood. The young man rolled his eyes. "I hope he's making friends down there and not just making a fool of himself."

Castiel turned to look out the window. "As when he… made his move at dinner."

Sam laughed under his breath, such a fleeting sound compared to the chorus from the bar. "Yeah. He does that a lot."

Castiel waited for him to elaborate, but silence fell between them instead, the whole space still except for the scrape of stools at the bar and the creak of wicker as Sam pulled his feet up to perch on the edge of his chair, wrapping one arm around his knees. Castiel focused on the view. The mountains were starting to glow against the eastern sky; the snow was still falling, but the crescent moon had slipped between a break in the storm clouds to ignite the fields of untouched snow, making the world beyond the windows sparkle under the thick red clouds. Castiel watched them twist above the hollow of the moon and thought, not for the first time, that Earth on the physical plane was a constantly shifting compilation of these tiny contradictions—moonlight through a storm, fire in the snow. Perhaps it was only natural that man was equally convoluted.

With that thought, he glanced over at Sam, and found the young man looking back at him, his bottom lip pulled between his teeth. His expression had shifted like the storm, already uncertain again. Castiel met his eyes and waited. Sam fiddled with a loose thread at the knee of his jeans and then let his feet slide back down to rest on the floor.

"Cas… about what Dean said earlier…" Castiel felt himself frown, and Sam bent forward to brace his elbows on his thighs, a whisper of a laugh escaping his lips again. "I mean about, you know, you being a friend…"

Castiel sat back in his chair with a nod of understanding. "A friend instead of a stalker," he finished, remembering the distinction. Sam winced and rubbed the back of his neck.

"Yeah. Uh. Look, I know he said that in the most dickish way possible, which is just Dean all over, but—he meant it, Cas. He didn't think about it, but…" Sam hesitated, his tongue darting out to wet his lips before he started over, staring at his hands. "I know Dean can be an ass, and you can ignore all that stuff he said if you want to. But I just wanted you to know…"

Castiel wondered why Sam so often did this—started sentences only to abandon them, or backtracked to start over. Sam didn't strike him as the type to speak without thinking first, and that made it stranger, all the places he stuttered over simple words. Then those hazel eyes lifted to find his again, and Castiel remembered Sam looking up at him from a wooden chair in a yellow hotel room, his feet braced on the furnace, his eyes deep like he wanted something so very hard to explain—holding out a Latin text, his face open with the simple request, though Castiel had the feeling it wasn't what he'd really wanted to ask. He wondered what words were supposed to go in these spaces, and if he'd know that if he understood more about humans, if he understood more about Sam.

Sam cleared his throat and took a deep breath. "I guess I just wanted to say that I think of you that way, too, and… and I'd like that."

Castiel felt his eyebrows draw together. "Like what, Sam?" he asked.

Sam wound his fingers together in his lap. "I'd like to be friends."

Castiel glanced out at the storm. He watched the snowflakes on the glass and remembered Sam curled up in a windowsill, rubbing his socked feet together next to an old yellow book; remembered Sam offering him a mug of tea thick with lemon steam, holding out a brown soda that fizzed on his tongue. Remembered Sam smiling when he asked if angels dreamt. Then he turned back to his companion and tipped his head, and wondered if this was how friendship worked, if it was always a thing that was asked for and given, or denied.

"I haven't had a friend before," Castiel said.

Sam laughed at that—just a small laugh that was more breath than sound, but he ducked his head all the same, as if to hide his reaction from waiting blue eyes. In a moment he had recovered himself, though, and the laugh had retreated to a soft smile, flickering at the edges of his lips like it wanted to stretch into something more. Sam pushed his bangs back and held them as he shook his head.

"Then I'll be your second friend," he said, laughing again at the confusion on Castiel's face. "Because Dean really did mean it—he considers you a friend, Cas. And he would never say this, so I will, but… we care about you. Both of us," he added, his eyes flickering down for a moment to his knotted fingers in his lap. When they rose to meet Castiel's again, they were lighter, something unspoken sinking back into Sam until the angel couldn't see it in his expression anymore. "It was fun to have you sticking around today," Sam said. "Just as a friend. You can do that sometimes—if you want."

Castiel studied him in the silence of unsaid things, and watched his face, and wondered. Then he dipped his head in a short nod. "I will try to… stick around once in a while," he said, fumbling through the words.

Sam leaned his cheek against his palm and smiled. "I'd like that."

Castiel wondered if it would be redundant to say he thought he'd like that, too.

.x.

Sam was a pain in the ass.

Dean considered himself to be a pretty understanding guy as older brothers went. He understood that Sam had his bitch issues, like any girly, quasi-gay younger brother with hippie hair—he always had to have his coffee first thing in the morning and he insisted they eat somewhere other than greasy spoons at least once a week, because he was worried about getting fat or whatever. Recently it had also come to his attention that Sam was crushing on their friendly, neighborhood stalker-angel like a six-year-old girl on that Beaver kid, and he was making a concerted effort to give Sam as much crap about it as possible before he got over it and the moment was lost. But the thing that absolutely pissed Dean off the most about his little brother was that Sam could drag his feet like a fucking snail wearing concrete galoshes.

"Sammy!" Dean leaned against the bathroom door and hammered on it with the back of his fist, staring up at the wood planks of the bunkhouse ceiling. "I'm starving. Quit painting your nails and get out of there already."

There was a shift inside—probably Sam stuck in the tiny gap between the sink and the door, like a moose in a dog crate. "Dean, I'm trying to get my pants on," came Sam's voice, muffled through the thick wood. He still sounded as cranky as he had when he'd gone in, though. "Can you give me, like, five minutes here?"

Dean rolled his eyes at the ceiling and dropped his head to stare at the far side of their crap room, where Castiel was inspecting the digital alarm clock, turning it over in his hands like a bomb in a bad cop movie. Dean sagged back against the door. "You don't have to change your pants to go on a McDonald's run, Sam," he called back to his brother. "The huge clown with the frizzy red afro doesn't care what you're wearing. And we're using the drive-thru anyway."

Dean wasn't sure how you could hear a look, but Sam was definitely sending him a nasty one through the door, probably for working one of Sam's top-ten childhood nightmares into the conversation. But what kind of a pussy was afraid of clowns anyway?

"I'm not changing my pants because we're going to McDonald's," Sam told him, accompanied by a _ping_ that sounded like his belt buckle smacking the sink. "I'm changing my pants because you tripped me on the stairs outside the lodge and I slid down a snow bank, and I didn't think you wanted me getting mud and slush all over the Impala's driver's seat."

Dean didn't want that, it was true. He didn't want Sam driving his baby at all, really, but he was currently smashed enough that he wasn't going to do it himself—not after the last time. But there were more pressing issues here than admitting Sam was right about something.

"I didn't trip you," Dean called through the door.

He could just hear Sam giving that snippy little head toss. "No, you're right. You pushed me. Right down the stairs."

Dean stared up at the thick rope tracing the rafter logs and wondered if he was supposed to hang himself with it when he couldn't take this conversation anymore. "Well, maybe I wouldn't have if you hadn't been all up in my space." Whenever Dean got hammered, Sam turned into a big, goopy octopus who couldn't keep his hands to himself and wrapped his stretchy Gak limbs all over his brother—which was weird, because Dean was supposed to be the drunk one. Dean banged his head back against the door and regretted it immediately as the impact ping-ponged around in his brain. "You keep your slimy tentacles away from me and we won't have a problem."

There was silence from the john, and then the sound of Sam clearing his throat. "That didn't make as much sense out loud as it did in your head," his brother informed him, sounding just a little too smug. Dean hated that smug bastard sometimes. But not as much as he hated starving to death in a horror-movie excuse for a mountain lodge while his own personal stooge of a guardian angel did God only knew what to the alarm clock. Dean shifted his back against the door and caught Castiel's eye.

"If that goes off tomorrow morning, I'm gonna call you down here and pluck you bare, you turkey," Dean warned, giving Cas a _back the hell off_ nod. Castiel slowly set the alarm clock back on the bedside table.

"What?" Sam shouted at him. Dean rolled his eyes at the whole stupid world.

"Hamburgers, Sammy!" Dean moaned, beating the back of his head against the door. "I'm dying out here!" He got no response at first, so he picked up the pace with his skull, tapping out a Metallica song on the bathroom door. "Sammy…"

"Okay, Dean—I'm coming out, all right? I have my pants on now. Would you get away from the door?"

"Took you long enough," Dean grumbled. But he got out of the way anyway, because the bathroom door had all these sharp coat spikes on the back of it and he really didn't need one of those in the head. He'd already lost his buzz once tonight.

Sam came out looking pissed. Dean hadn't really expected anything else, especially because his octopus brother probably had to do fucking yoga in the miniscule bathroom in order to change his pants, so he just gave Sam a toothy grin and waved him toward the door, using huge gestures so that even Cas would get the message. "Let's get out of here," Dean said, grabbing his leather coat from the bed. "There's a big greasy bag of burgers with our names on it."

Sam wrinkled his nose at that, like he was too good for McDonald's—but he could just suck it, because no one was too good for McDonald's. "Yeah, Dean… I might have some fries or something, but I'm not going to have a burger," Sam told him over one shoulder, bending down to wrestle his boots on. Sam could even make that take eons. Dean tapped his foot and pulled the door open, idly checking the hallway for the short, angry woman who was staying next door and was probably still out for his blood—but the coast was clear, at least for now. Sam shoved his heels down into his boots and straightened back to his ridiculously ridiculous height. "I'm not really that hungry," he finished.

Dean hoped his massive snort got across exactly how stupid that statement was, but he wasn't sure he managed it. "The hell you aren't," he said as he led his brother and Cas the eternal tagalong out into the hallway. He only smashed into one wall before he found his balance on the springy carpet. "You lost half your dinner to a black hole who didn't even appreciate it. That is not happening again, by the way," Dean added, swinging around to jerk his finger at Sam or Castiel or both, and almost slipping down the flight of stairs to the first floor in the process. At least the railing was sturdy—ought to be, since it was made of whole fucking trees. "No McDonald's for Cas, you hear me? I'm not gonna have you pounding down cheeseburgers like you did Sammy's pasta. They are too precious for that."

Sam looked like he had a smartass comment to make about that—who was surprised—but they were both distracted when suddenly Castiel popped like the fucking weasel, vanishing from the landing with his trademark rustle. Sam blinked and Dean almost toppled down the stairs after all, wondering for a microsecond if Cas had zapped out because he was that offended about the cheeseburger thing—but then he caught a glimpse of tan trench coat one floor below them, and he realized Castiel had just beamed down so he didn't have to wear himself out walking like twelve little stairs. Dean shook his head.

"Dude, if you're gonna start eating, you gotta start walking, too, or you're gonna have to lose that trench coat for a sweaty track suit."

Castiel glanced down at his coat, obviously missing the joke. Sam just rolled his eyes. But Dean knew for a fact that he was hilarious, especially when he was drunk, so he didn't let it get to him. He was still laughing at his own joke when he slipped on the second-to-last step and sort of skidded down to the first floor, grabbing the wall to keep from going ass over ankles and smashing into Cas like a human bowling ball.

In retrospect, the slip was probably the only reason he avoided doing what Sam did three seconds later—racing down the stairs after Dean in his humongous clown shoes, Sam forgot to check for low-hanging logs and slammed his head right into the huge rafter above the very last stair. Dean didn't think the world was really moving in slow motion, but his brain sort of was as Sam windmilled backward and his feet flew out from under him. He took the last few stairs on his back, and Dean barely got out of the way before his brother's long legs came flailing for his knees. Sam hit the wall instead. Then he just sort of lay there as the bang vibrated in Dean's head, making all the alcohol slosh around between his ears.

"Sammy?" Dean asked. He tried to rush back to his brother—but the floor wasn't as stable as it was supposed to be, and he wiped out midway, sliding to his knees and gripping the heavy log railing to keep himself up. Fuck this lodge and its slanted floors. He was starting to think this bunkhouse was actually cursed; if one more bad thing happened, he was gonna salt and burn the whole fucking thing. "Sammy, you okay?" Dean barked, trying to decide if Sam's eyes were open or closed, and which one was better.

This was definitely not supposed to happen to his designated driver.

Dean made a serious effort to get his feet under him, but Cas beat him to it. All of a sudden the angel was kneeling at Sam's side, inspecting the massive goose egg that was already swelling on his forehead; for some reason that pissed Dean off, and he managed to make it back to standing, feeling a little better with his legs under him again.

"I got it, Cas. I can take care of him."

Castiel sent him a look he had definitely copied from Sam—doubtful and critical and bitchy all at the same time. "You cannot," the angel told him, his eyes slipping for a moment to Dean's fingers gripping the railing. "Unless you allow me to heal your liver again." Then he went back to what he was doing, which was mostly just staring at Sam—and Dean could do that drunk or sober, fuck you very much. But it was hard to explain giving up a fifty-dollar spirit buzz when somebody was already on the case, and an angel no less, whether he really deserved that position or not. Dean focused on getting a few steps closer, and at last he was back at the bottom of the stairs, trying to figure out if he could step over Sam's gangly legs without tripping and crushing his unconscious brother. He decided not to risk it.

"Just don't… mess with him, okay?" Dean said, as Castiel put his hands on either side of Sam's neck like he was going to snap it or something. "And don't move him. It's not good to move someone who hit their head."

"I will not move him," Castiel replied, nodding once. Then he put his hand on Sam's temple and the two poofed into thin air, and Dean cursed so loud he actually heard the echo. Because goddamn it if he swore Cas wasn't messing with him on purpose.

"Cas?"

Sam's voice had always been good at getting Dean moving—even if it meant going back up those fucking stairs. By the time Dean made it back to the top and worked off the last crumbs of his tiny frickin' cheeseburger, his AWOL pals had transformed the creepy serial killer common room into a disgustingly sappy scene from one of those made-for-TV romance movies that made Dean want to upchuck the remnants of his garlic fries: Sam lay flat on his back on the floor, and to make up for the missing angle of the stairs Cas had his head in his lap, his hands braced on either side of Sam's neck to keep him from twisting and popping up. Not that Sam looked like he was really in a popping mood.

Cas, though.

"Cas," Dean snapped, throwing his arms out in your basic _what the hell_ as Castiel's eyes flickered up to him. "The fuck did I just say, man?"

Castiel seemed to be ignoring him, the sonofabitch. He was tempted to go over there and sock Cas in the face, just to show him who was what, because what was the point of having an angel if it did whatever the hell it felt like; the only thing that stopped him was that Sam's eyes were open now, blinking slowly up at Cas as he raised one hand and massaged it over his forehead.

"Ow… my back," he said, wincing like the word itself was setting him off.

Castiel frowned. "You hit your head," he said—a little slowly, like he thought Sam might be working with only half a box of crayons right now. Dean decided half a box of crayons was a good description of Castiel basically all the time.

Sam breathed out hard, the sound tinged like he was trying to laugh. "No, I dragged my back down like five different steps. That was way worse. I've hit my head so many times I barely felt that part."

Dean sagged back against the railing. If Sam was making jokes, he couldn't be in that bad shape—and suddenly Dean wasn't sure why he'd been worried at all, because angels could fix anything anyway. Now that he thought about it, the whole thing was kind of funny, Sam's flailing arms and his big, wide eyes as he thumped down the stairs like one of those America's Funniest Home Videos—and then Dean was laughing, shaking his head as Sam's eyes lifted to find his.

"Dude, you remember Bambi slipping on the icy pond and sliding into the bushes?" Dean asked. "Well, if you were a baby deer instead of a huge fucking moose, you still would've been only about half that graceful."

Sam blinked at him. "Man, what is with you and kids' movies today?" he asked through a grimace.

Dean shrugged. "I stand by it." Then he realized that Cas still wasn't doing anything but staring at the red patch on his brother's forehead, and that if he let the lovebirds do this in their own time, there was a good chance he was going to miss his McDonald's feast, even though they stayed open till two. He gave a sharp whistle, not surprised that Castiel looked up like a dog. "Yo, Cas—you wanna get on with it? Use your freaky angel mojo and fix him already. I need my designated driver like now."

Castiel narrowed his eyes at that, his typical _I'm not here to fulfill your petty human concerns_ glare out in full force—but what _was_ he here for, if he wasn't going to repair people who bit it on the stairs? Cas didn't actually say anything to him, though, probably because Sam reached up and grabbed the angel's sleeve with one hand, shifting his head against Castiel's thigh.

Dean was too drunk to be sick about that right now. He had a feeling it was going to sneak up on him later, though.

"Cas, you don't have to," Sam was saying—which was such a stupid Sam thing to say, even though he was wincing after every third word. "It's not that bad. I can… I'll be fine in a minute."

Castiel turned deliberately back to the figure in his lap, giving Dean a dirty look in the process—but Dean was long immune to dirty looks, thanks to the younger brother currently splayed out on his guardian angel. "I have no qualms about healing you, Sam," Castiel said. Dean felt like there was an unspoken there, something about people he did have qualms healing. He had no time to be pissed about that now, though. There were hamburgers at stake.

"Bravo," Dean called. "I'm touched. Get to it, Clarence—chop chop."

Now it was Sam giving him the bitchy look. Cas was ignoring him again, but at least he was moving, sliding his hands up to Sam's face and pressing two fingertips to each of his temples. "Relax," the angel said, and Sam obediently tipped his head back, closing his eyes.

Dean expected it to be over in an instant—a quick jab that felt like getting punched in the head by a bolt of lightning, a little roaring in the ears, and presto, all better. But somehow it wasn't. Ten seconds later, Cas was still just sitting there cradling his brother's head, and Sam's face was totally chill, like he was getting a massage instead of getting his skull split in half by Castiel's two-finger death punch. Dean blinked a couple times to make sure he hadn't slipped into an alcoholic coma and was dreaming the whole damn thing—but nope, they were still there, lost in their own little world that couldn't have been any smarmier with a chorus of violins. Then the swelling disappeared from Sam's enormous forehead and he opened his eyes, and when he smiled up at the angel Dean knew for a fact that Cas had been gentler with Sam than he'd ever been with him, because Dean could never find it in him to smile for at least a minute and a half after Cas microwaved his brain. Dean leaned back on the railing and crossed his arms.

"So, what, you're playing favorites now?"

Dean didn't get an answer to that question. Just as Sam and Cas turned to give him equally blank, innocent stares, there was a bang down the hallway toward their room, followed by the pounding of someone double-timing it their way. There were other doors down there, and it should have been anybody else—but Dean knew all about Winchester luck, and he just wasn't the least bit surprised when the short, angry woman appeared in the doorway to the common room a second later, dogged by the tall, glasses-wearing geek who might have been her husband. The angry woman took one look at Sam and Cas and her hands snapped into place on her hips, and Dean suddenly got the sense that this was somebody's mother, and he couldn't help feeling sorry for the poor bastard.

"This common room is for everyone," the short, angry woman said, turning to glare daggers at Dean, too, even though he wasn't getting all mushy on the floor. Then she set off down the stairs at a full gallop, apparently in too much of a hurry even to stick around and yell at them properly.

Yep. The second they made it back with his burgers, Dean was definitely setting the deadbolt.

.x.

Castiel did not like the car. He found it disconcerting to be encased in a metal box that moved under its own power, even if it was ultimately under Sam's control, and he disliked the vibrations that rattled up to him through the seat, each one tenuous and taut as Sam's fingers gripping the steering wheel. Castiel hadn't intended to enter the car at all, had only followed them to the vehicle in the same idle way he'd followed them through the lodge earlier that evening—but Sam had opened a door for him and then fastened him into the backseat, and Castiel hadn't been sure anymore if it was acceptable to leave, since human restraints, however feeble, probably meant his presence was requested.

He had put up with the Impala for as long as he could stand—still, when Dean turned up the stereo to pound through the shell of the car and Sam slid on the icy road and nearly hit a mailbox, Castiel unfurled his wings and disappeared. He had more pressing duties than being shaken around inside a metal cage. It had been hours since he'd reported in at the garrison, after all, the longest he had ever been absent from his post. He wondered if Uriel had brought it to anyone's attention.

Castiel didn't intend to go back. He had no reason to. The Winchesters were not on a case, and he had not been called, and Heaven's business was, as always, not urgent but never-ending. But even intangible, Castiel couldn't turn his thoughts from the Impala swerving on icy asphalt and Sam's white-knuckled grip on the wheel—and almost without feeling his wings unfold, he found himself once again in the Winchesters' darkened room, seeking out two silent figures: one sprawled out under his covers, the window behind him open partway to admit the whistle of a cold wind; the other sitting up on the edge of the second bed, his features sharp under the blue glow of the computer screen, the only light in the room. Castiel was quiet for a moment before he remembered himself.

"Hello, Sam."

Sam glanced up from the bright screen and squinted in Castiel's direction, fighting the contrast to find him in the darkness. Castiel stepped forward into the center of the room and watched the surprise drift away from Sam's face, replaced by the small, flickering smile that was so familiar on him. Castiel wondered what it meant.

"Hey, Cas," Sam greeted. His voice was soft and low, and without looking at him Castiel was sure Dean must be asleep, because he had heard that timbre in Sam's voice before—in a sunny yellow room over a scatter of Latin texts while Dean fought a fever in the nearby bed, his head buried in the pillows. Sam brushed his hair behind his ear and leaned one hand back on the mattress. "We weren't sure where you went before… did you get called back to Heaven?"

The rattle of the car intruded on his memory, and Castiel frowned. "No," he said. Sam blinked at his answer, but then lifted his eyebrows as if he had understood something, and suddenly Castiel found himself uncertain, shifting his black shoes against the thick carpet. "Was I needed?" he asked, wondering why a little laugh leapt from Sam's lips at the question.

"Uh… no, Cas," Sam assured him, reaching up to scratch his ear. "Dean's pretty good at ordering cheeseburgers all by himself."

Sam glanced over his shoulder at the other bed, and Castiel followed his gaze, noticing for the first time the five white and red wrappers thrown down in crumpled balls into the space between Dean's bed and Sam's, and that Dean had a smear of yellow, perhaps mustard, around the corners of his mouth, as if he had dropped into sleep the instant he finished eating. A heavy woven blanket had been slung over his legs, to ward off the chill from the window; Castiel imagined that was Sam's doing, like the darkened lights and the large plastic cup on the nightstand that had been placed just out of reach of Dean's careless elbow. Castiel turned back to Sam and the young man shrugged, his socked toes twitching idly against the floor.

"He never sleeps better than with a full stomach," Sam told him. Then he tipped his head back to look up at Castiel, and the glow of the computer caught his eyes, making them shimmer in white and blue. "I thought maybe you'd taken off for the night."

It wasn't a question, or an accusation, but Castiel somehow felt it wasn't a statement either—nothing so simple, because Sam was never simple. Castiel glanced at Dean again, and then back to Sam, and out the window at the road, quiet and glistening under the snow and the light of the crescent moon, the wind whispering in the curtains like a beckoning voice. Then he pressed his lips together and turned from the window, ignoring the chorus of angels that was ever in the back of his mind.

"Soon," he said. He took another step toward Sam and raised one hand, touching his fingertips gingerly to the back of the computer. "Are you researching, Sam?"

Castiel didn't understand why Sam ducked his head at the question, his tongue darting out to moisten his lips. "I wouldn't call it that," Sam replied. His voice was light, almost careless, but there was an undercurrent of something else to it as he raised one hand and rubbed the back of his neck, blinking at the black and white keys. "More like, since we're here—just dotting the i's, crossing the t's, you know." Castiel felt his eyebrows draw together, and Sam looked up at him with an apologetic smile, squinting through the fall of his dark bangs. "Actually, you probably don't know. Probably have no idea what I just said."

Human communication was a convoluted medium. Castiel suspected Sam made it even more so than it needed to be. He considered the young man for a moment, one hand on his neck and the other tracing abstract circles on the black touchpad; then he stepped around to the end of the bed and peered at the computer screen, studying the cascade of white boxes marked with text and images. The largest box featured the words "Search for the Truth" in blinking red letters, with a picture of a shaggy brown creature beneath it, out of focus between the trunks of pine trees. Sam sighed and let his head dip forward.

"I'm just rechecking some of the local lore about… that case," Sam said, his hand flickering up in a vague gesture.

Castiel frowned. "The case you don't believe exists, because there is no…" He glanced at the words beneath the blurry picture for confirmation. "Bigfoot."

Sam tipped his head in a half nod. "Right, no, I mean… there's not, is there?" he asked suddenly, his gaze lifting to Castiel. The angel felt his eyes narrow, and immediately Sam's darted away again, refocusing on the computer as he shook his head hard. "Sorry. Stupid question. Um…" Sam leaned back to stare at the ceiling, and then closed his eyes for a moment. When he opened them again, he looked away from Castiel, his shoulders relaxing as he rubbed one hand against his face. "I'm just being thorough, that's all."

Castiel considered that, and the evasiveness of the young man's expression. Then he glanced over his shoulder at the bed by the window, watched as Dean burrowed into the mattress with a grunt, his legs jerking under the thick woven blanket. When he turned back to Sam, the puzzlement had left his face.

"You are doing this for Dean," he said.

Sam opened his mouth and held it that way, his tongue fiddling with the edges of his teeth. "No," he replied first, but paused, pressing his lips together. "Well…" Then Sam sighed through his mouth and rolled his eyes, a tiny smile tugging at his expression. "Probably. Yes." Castiel frowned at the contradictory answer, and Sam braced his arms behind him on the bed so he could lean back on his hands, his head flopping back and his hair brushing his shoulders. "It's his thing, you know," he said, finally catching Castiel's eyes as he shrugged once more. "He gets so excited. But all this has only made me more sure that this was a hoax, so…"

Castiel did not reply. He was preoccupied with the memory of other moments like this—of the hotel with yellow bedspreads, the furnace creaking under the pulse of building heat; Sam standing in the rain and asking for a reprieve for his brother, safety from nightmares of spilling blood in Hell; Sam sitting in a wicker chair and listening to Dean's drunken laughter one floor below, supporting his brother as he stumbled down icy steps back to the car—all of the things Sam had done for Dean, in the short time since Castiel had first shaken his hand. In the other bed, Dean snorted and dug his face into the pillows, and Castiel glanced at the heavy blanket draped over him, the cheeseburger wrappers on the floor. The winter wind whipped into the curtains, undulating the thick fabric against the glass; Castiel turned back to Sam in time to see him shiver and rub his feet together in his mismatched socks, one red and the other dark blue. For the first time since he had tucked his wings away, he wondered if the room was cold, and why Sam had so many differently colored socks. The first question seemed more important.

"Is the window open for Dean as well?" Castiel asked as he caught Sam's eyes, their color reduced to black in the dim light.

Sam laughed under his breath. "Actually, that was for me," he admitted. "Dean always gets double onions, and—I had to get the burger smell out of here. But I think I can close it now."

Sam pulled the top of the computer toward him and folded it closed, and the room was suddenly dark, the distant reflection of moonlight on snow the only illumination. Castiel watched his silhouette slide the laptop into his bag. He was a fluid shape in the shadows, bending to tuck the backpack under the edge of his bed, then standing up from the mattress and stretching over his head, his fingertips almost brushing the ceiling. As he moved around the angel toward the window, stepping carefully over every cheeseburger wrapper, Castiel wondered why Sam was embarrassed of his selflessness, when it was perhaps the aspect of man closest to the divine.

The frame of the window was made of heavy, stainless wood, and barely creaked when Sam pushed down on it with both palms, the window stuck in its track. Castiel watched as Sam braced his arm along the crosspiece and pushed down with his shoulder, the glass shuddering under the force—then suddenly his impressions of Sam were all awash with pain, a spike of adrenaline, a gasp of drawn breath. Sam jerked back from the window and stepped badly, his feet catching on Dean's discarded boots.

The bed was behind him, a soft enough landing except for the slumped form of his brother. It would be a trivial fall. But as Sam lost his footing and tipped back, his equilibrium broken, Castiel couldn't help thinking of another trivial fall, only a few hours earlier—how few steps had been left between Sam and the bottom of the stairs, how heavy his head had been on Castiel's thigh. He couldn't see the fear in Sam's eyes this time, because his back was turned, but he could see it in the lines of his shoulders, wound tight with the vertigo, braced for the fall. Castiel opened his wings. Then he was behind Sam, arms around his waist, disrupting the momentum with his physical form. Sam lurched against his chest and grabbed his sleeve and stopped, and all of a sudden everything was still again, and no one was falling.

"Cas," Sam breathed.

Castiel said nothing. He was distracted by the thrum of Sam's heartbeat, thudding against him at every point of contact—his whole body quivering with it, the adrenaline and the pain. He knew Sam's heartbeat already, so well, was aware of it always when in his presence, just one of so many things he watched over. But it felt different like this, hammering against him, so urgent and tenuous, like it was a hummingbird and not a muscle fluttering in his chest. Sam fisted his hand in the sleeve of Castiel's coat, and then let go with a hiss, drawing his hand back and staring at it through the darkness.

"Oh, shi—mm." Sam cut himself off by biting his lip, and shook his fingers. "Flip, that stings."

Castiel considered the swell of flesh along the heel of his hand, felt the blood rushing up into Sam's wrist, already seeking out the damage. "You are not badly hurt," he said.

Sam shook his head. "No, I just—pinched it in the frame. But it'll be fine. It just…" He flexed his wrist and grimaced, the expression starker for the shadows on his face. Sam exhaled through his teeth. "It'll be fine," he repeated.

Castiel knew that. Already the pain was losing its imperative, Sam's shoulders relaxing against the angel, his shock lessening with each breath in and out. But his heartbeat wasn't slowing down, still pounding strong enough that Castiel felt it on his arms as Sam lowered his hand and looked over his shoulder, studied the angel's face, looked away. Castiel found it disconcerting.

Sam's weight was as nothing against him, but his heartbeat had presence, and urgency; and even though it was meaningless, already fading, Castiel found himself fighting the instinct to take the pain from Sam's hand, to erase that slightest of wounds, just to bring his heartbeat down. The angel tipped his head far enough to stare into Sam's eyes and wondered if this was what humans felt when caring for one another—the immediacy, the closeness, the solidity of pain and comfort. The sheer physicality of their broken pieces brushing up against each other.

Sam glanced at Castiel's arms around him and cleared his throat. "The latch," he stumbled. "I didn't, um—I didn't get the latch. The window. It's not latched."

Castiel frowned. But he drew away and pushed the window all the way down, sliding the latch closed on the crossbar—when he turned around, Sam had retreated to his bed, and was seated on the far edge, his head turned to meet Castiel's gaze. Castiel reached out with his grace to find Sam's pulse slowing down at last, the tremors fading from the cage around his beating heart. Sam smiled at him, but the expression seemed shallow, distracted.

"Thanks, Cas," he said, running a hand through his hair.

Castiel glanced at the window and felt his brows furrow. "It wasn't difficult," he said.

Sam's next smile was more genuine, though he ducked his head as if to keep it to himself, rubbing his right hand with careful fingers. "Depends who you ask," he said. Then Sam shrugged and looked up at him again, his features bright with reflected moonlight. "But I sort of meant about…" When the words came to nothing, Castiel stepped forward to the foot of the bed, and Sam shook his head, the movement tossing shadows over his face. "You know, for hanging out with us today. It was fun."

"You said that earlier," Castiel told him. "Above the restaurant."

Sam had a strange expression on his face, one the angel didn't recognize. Perhaps bemused. Sam raised his eyebrows as he traced a pattern into the sheets with one fingertip. "Okay. Then I guess I'll just say thanks for coming back to say goodnight."

Castiel frowned. "Why would I say that?" he asked.

Sam gave a short laugh—the one that was barely a breath, that always tipped his chin down and quirked his lips up at the corners, just enough to show the white of his teeth. Castiel wasn't sure when he'd learned to recognize that laugh. "It's just something people say to each other before they go to bed," Sam explained, his voice light, little more than a murmur. Castiel watched his silhouette reach up to scratch his neck. "Just custom, I guess."

Castiel narrowed his eyes, regarding the dark features of the young man before him. "It's a greeting," he tried. "Like good morning."

Sam laughed again, even more quietly, a quick exhale through his nose. "It's more like a goodbye. Or like a… a blessing, maybe. Like wishing someone sweet dreams."

"I did not come to say that," Castiel admitted.

Sam flopped back onto the bed and the moonlight cut across his face, illuminating his smile. "Yeah, I got that, Cas."

He didn't say anything else for a moment as he nudged his way to the top of the bed and slid under the covers, shivering at the touch of white sheets on the bare skin of his arms; Castiel decided the room must be cold after all, and wondered if it were so hard for all humans to stay warm, or if Sam struggled with that more than most. Sam's head fell back onto the pillows and the angel considered taking flight, if he was no longer wanted here—but then Sam rolled over onto one hip, staring at him through the darkness, and his injured hand crawled out from under the covers to curl in the pillow next to his head, each long finger tentative as a held breath.

"Hey, Castiel?"

The tone was soft, each syllable uncertain—but it was the use of his full name that caught the angel's attention, and then he wondered when he had gotten so used to the nickname that he expected it instead. Castiel moved around the edge of bed to stand beside him and looked down at the moonlight glowing in the shell of Sam's ear.

"Yes, Sam?" he asked.

Sam shifted against the pillow, his body changing shape under the blankets; Castiel wondered if he was kicking his feet, red and blue socks meeting under his covers. "Wherever you rest, I hope it's… nice."

Castiel tilted his head, regarding the dark planes of Sam's face against the white pillow. "Heaven often is."

Sam laughed under his breath. "Yeah. Sorry. I just…" The words trailed off, one more of Sam's unfinished thoughts, one more space Castiel ought to understand how to fill in on his own. Then Sam breathed out and curled his hand into his pillow, and looked up into Castiel's eyes, his lips hinting at a smile. "I had a good time tonight. With you."

"Oh, _fuck it all_ , Sammy. Cas, would you just kiss him and get out of here already?"

The sleepy groan was Dean's. Castiel was sure a moment later when a pillow flew from the other bed to hit Sam in the head, and the younger Winchester made a startled noise, hurling the pillow back into his brother's face with remarkable aim. Dean grunted and wrapped an arm around it, but that was his only reaction, other than to turn over and face the window. Castiel wondered if the mustard smudge was on his pillows now.

Sam rolled his eyes at his brother's back. Then his gaze returned to Castiel, and he shook his head, his hair spreading out in a dark tangle across the pillowcase. "Sorry. He doesn't mean… never mind. Goodnight, Cas."

Castiel opened his wings. "Goodnight, Sam," he said.

Goodnight was a goodbye—that much Castiel had understood. Dean's remark had been convoluted, but the dismissal was clear. And Castiel had no reason to stay. All the same he stood for a long time with his wings poised at his back, unmoving, invisible, listening as Sam's breathing became softer and slower with every inhale. Then he reached out and took the last tingling pain from Sam's hand, and pushed it back under the covers—because even trivial things could be mended, and goodnight was also a blessing, and Sam had been cold long enough.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Only the epilogue to go after this. Thanks, everyone, for reading and sending the great reviews.


	5. Epilogue: Thanks for Staying

**Epilogue**

The Hallowed Grounds coffee shop in the main lodge was packed at ten in the morning. Sam thought he was the only person in there not headed out cross-country skiing; where he stood at the end of the bar, waiting for his latte and towering over the rest of the coffee crowd, the world was a sea of knit hats and ear warmers, gloved hands endlessly pulling hot drinks down from the counter. A long line of skis was propped up near the outer door, and the entryway of the coffee shop was glistening from the wet treads of snow boots, probably just ducking in for a pick-me-up before heading right back out. Sam glanced out the picture windows at the sun on the unbroken snow, the white mountains stretching up into a startling blue sky, and wondered what it would be like, to go out into the woods for fun instead of chasing God only knew what with a couple of shotguns and a car that sucked in the snow.

Dean had been pissed to hear Sam's theory that Cas had bailed the night before because he didn't like riding in the Impala—Dean had a bad habit of taking anything negative said about the Impala as a personal insult, and apparently the fact that Castiel was an angel and had probably never ridden in a car before was no excuse for not appreciating Dean's baby. Dean had threatened to knock some sense into Castiel the next time they saw him; Sam doubted his brother would remember it, though, since he'd been busy calling the lodge's day spa at the time and arranging some kind of massage date with somebody named Kim. Apparently massages weren't lame if they were basically, in Dean's words, live soft-core porn with hot Asian chicks. They'd agreed to meet at the coffee shop at ten thirty to get on the road, but Sam had come early, and it was probably a good thing—with the crowd, it might take half an hour just to get his coffee.

"Hot chocolates for Marina!"

Sam flattened himself against the wall to get out of the way of the woman reaching for the two ceramic cups, each one bobbing with whipped cream. He smiled as his eyes caught the sign behind the bar, the words "Hallowed Grounds" written in curling green script above a steaming cup. In some ways it was a shame they hadn't stopped by with Cas the night before—but on second thought, the angel probably wouldn't have gotten the joke anyway.

Sam's eyes wandered to the window again, unfocused except for the memory of Castiel's wings rustling in the dark, the angel pressed against his back, catching him effortlessly in a fraction of a second. Sam didn't know what he'd been expecting, but Castiel stopping his momentum without so much as bracing himself was not it; Cas had felt solid, real, like being caught by a person instead of a manifestation of grace and light—except that no person had been able to catch Sam like that since he shot up the summer before tenth grade. As he'd hovered right at the edge of sleep, Sam thought he'd felt Castiel's hand on his, the phantom sensation of warm fingers still lingering on his skin when he woke in the morning—but Sam was willing to admit that might be more dream than reality. He leaned into the wall and flexed his right hand in the pocket of his coat. He could still feel it almost, just a flicker of sensation, there and not there—sort of like Cas himself.

"Latte for Sam!"

Sam pulled himself out of his thoughts and grabbed the paper cup from the middle-aged woman behind the counter, giving her an absentminded smile. Most of the tables in the café were full; he saw one open chair at a two-person table, but when he realized that the person in the other chair was none other than the short blond woman who'd been their own personal vengeful spirit since they arrived at the bunkhouse, he kept moving, weaving between couples and families until he reached the far corner of the café. A window looked out at the lodge's back patio, the fire pit already blazing; Sam sat down on the small couch beneath it and tucked his long legs as close as he could to keep them out of the way of other patrons. He took his first sip of coffee and let it sit on his tongue, dropping his head back to rest along the top of the couch.

It was stupid to get attached—he knew that. Castiel was an angel—Dean's angel, God's dazzling angel—and he was always going to belong to things that were so much bigger and more important, things he needed wings just to get to. Sam opened his eyes and looked backward out the window at the fire pit, the flames dull against the backdrop of brilliant snow. When Castiel was right there, his shoes hissing on the flagstones, it seemed so simple—but maybe the truth was that some part of Castiel was always far away, even when he felt close enough to touch, or dream about.

Sam's eyes drifted up from the fire pit to the doors into the restaurant, and then even higher, to the windows on the upper floor, the sitting area with creaky wicker chairs—and suddenly he was remembering something else entirely: pulling Castiel up the stairs by the cuff of his coat, sitting together in the dark and listening to Dean laugh. Castiel saying he'd never had a friend before, which was sort of sad and sort of childish and just so like Cas, an awkward angel with a strange beige trench coat and piercing blue eyes that shone in the moonlight and made Sam jump when they locked with his. Warm, unyielding arms catching him in the dark. Then Sam was smiling again, and he shook his head as he turned back to his coffee, rolling his eyes at his own melancholy. Because they were friends, and he could let the rest go, whether Cas came around for an evening or a day or just five minutes. Because he might not always be Dean's guardian angel, but friendship didn't have to be that transient, if you didn't let it. He would make sure he told Cas that, next time.

"Man, you must be one lonely fucker, Sam. Give you the choice of any seat in the house and you'll pick the loveseat every time."

Sam blinked at his coffee and looked up, surprised to see Dean standing next to his armrest. He started to ask why his brother was out of his massage already, and why he had to be an ass so early in the morning—but those questions were pushed out of his mind the second he got a good look at Dean and realized that every exposed part of his skin, from his hands to his neck above his jacket to the tips of his ears, was bright, flaming red. He looked like he'd been peeled. Sam burned his mouth on a gulp of coffee and then coughed through the last of it, staring up at his brother in horror.

"Dude, what the hell happened to you?" Sam asked, wiping flecks of coffee away from his mouth with the back of his hand. "I thought you had a massage with some girl named Kim."

"Okay, first of all, Kim is not a girl," Dean snapped. "Kim is not even a guy. Kim is a terminator. Apparently Kim is short for Kimmal Schwarzenegger." He ducked toward Sam and dropped his voice to a grumble, glancing over his shoulder like he expected to be ambushed any second. "And that was not a massage, Sammy. That was skin rape. I got fucking violated." Sam made a face at him, and Dean dug through his jean pockets until he found a crumpled pamphlet for the lodge's spa, which he shook in Sam's face. "This thing lied to me. 'Exfoliating Rawhide Rubdown.' What would you think that was?"

Sam couldn't keep his expression from twisting into a grimace, even the aftertaste of coffee sour in his mouth. "Um… someone scrubbing your skin off with a rough-bristle brush?" Dean gave him the classic idiot blink, and Sam shrugged against the couch, fighting to keep his smile from bursting out on his lips. "Why? What did you think it was?"

Dean shoved the pamphlet back in his pocket. "I don't know. But I'll tell you one thing—the Cowgirls' Rawhide Roundup was way different."

Sam rolled his eyes. "You're confusing reality with porn again."

"Yeah, whatever," Dean said. "Can we just get out of here? I've had all of this psycho ski lodge I can take. I need pigs in a blanket and a cheap beer in the next twenty minutes or I'm gonna lose it."

"It's ten in the morning," Sam muttered under his breath. But he got up from the couch anyway, because once Dean got on a roll nothing could stop him and they really had no reason to hang around. Then he paused and tucked his coffee cup close to his stomach, biting his lip. "Hey, Dean," he started. "I looked into the case a little more last night—you know, the sightings…"

Dean gave him a look like he'd just announced aliens were invading Sioux Falls. "Who the hell cares, Sam? Move your ass. We gotta get out of Dodge before that sadist comes back for the rest of me."

Sam had a good laugh about that as they walked to the car. Dean only smacked his arm once, and Sam figured that was fair, even though his coffee spilled and a few drops hit the tops of his worn-out boots. When they were safe inside the Impala, the motor purring under the hood and the poor excuse for heating slowly cranking out into the car, Dean turned to Sam and stared at him for a second, the way he did sometimes when Sam wished his brother would just talk to him instead of chasing his demons around his own head. Then Dean shook himself and shifted into first, and the Impala rolled out of the sunny parking lot, the packed snow crunching under her tires. Dean punched the stereo on and classic rock exploded out of the speakers.

"Shit vacation, Sammy," he yelled over the music, shaking his head as he gunned it down the icy washboard road. "No babes, barely any booze—I ended up with Kim and you ended up with Cas."

Sam almost said something to that. He even got his mouth halfway open. But then he closed it again and turned to look out the window, and studied the smile on the face of his reflection—because Dean didn't get his licks nearly often enough, so he had to savor it every time karma bit his brother in the ass, and ending up with Cas didn't sound so bad. Sam closed his eyes and leaned his head against the window to the familiar pounding beat, and thought about warm fingers around his—and somehow, the car didn't seem so cold anymore.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is the last chapter of "A Change in the Weather," but the next Cas/Sam story in the Other Guardian 'verse should hopefully be up soon. It will be called "Blood and Broken Glass." Thanks for reading, everyone.


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